📜 This Day in History

August 7

• 1461Ming Chinese general Cao Qin staged a failed coup against the Tianshun Emperor.
• 1850The first section of the Great Northern Railway, now the southern section of the East Coast Main Line, opened between London and Peterborough.
• 1914The Battle of Mulhouse began with France's first attack of World War I in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to recover the region of Alsace from Germany.
• 1946The Soviet Union informed Turkey that the way in which the latter was handling the Turkish Straits no longer represented the security interests of Turkey's fellow Black Sea nations, escalating the Turkish Straits crisis.
• 1985Five members of the Bamber family were found murdered at a farmhouse in Tolleshunt D'Arcy, England.
• 2020Air India Express Flight 1344 overshot the runway at Calicut International Airport in Kerala, India, and crashed, killing 21 of the 190 people on board.

Born on this day

• 1876Mata Hari, Dutch dancer and spy (died 1917)
• 1933Elinor Ostrom, American economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2012)
• 1975Charlize Theron, South African actress
• 1984Yun Hyon-seok, South Korean poet and author (died 2003)