October 7: Facts & Historical Events On This Day

The price of gold on the New York Mercantile Exchange reached $4,000.00 an ounce for the first time.

A Spanish nurse became the first person to contract Ebola outside of West Africa.

The cause was blamed on substandard PPE.

Swedish music streaming service Spotify was launched by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon.

Arnold Schwarzenegger became Governor of California.

A gay student, Matthew Shepard, was brutally beaten and left to die in Wyoming, US.

Shepard was found the next day by two cyclists. He was tied to a fence and died a few days later.

Fox News Channel began broadcasting.

Author Toni Morrison won the Nobel Peace Prize for literature for her work and essays about the Black American experience.

British Newspaper “The Independent” was first published.

The Soviet spacecraft Luna 3 allowed the world to look at the far side of the moon for the first time.

The images returned were of poor quality compared to later photos, but it was our first glance at the other side of the moon and was met with great excitement worldwide.

The Sonderkommandos, prisoners who took care of the bodies at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp, protested their pending mass murder.

Several female Jews smuggled gunpowder from the camp's munitions factory to the workers in Crematorium IV. Those workers planned to use the gunpowder to destroy the crematorium but had their plans cut short when they learned their workforce was due to be executed. Instead, they attacked the guards in revolt, killing only a handful but dying themselves. A total of 452 Sonderkommandos were either killed in the revolution or executed after, along with four of the woman smugglers.

The first-ever infrared photo was taken in Rochester, New York.

The photo was taken in complete darkness and was a group of many men sitting in a theater. But of course, the picture wasn't black; the men in the theatre were clear in the photo.

The Netherlands’ flag carrier airline was founded under the name KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.

KLM is the oldest airline in the world that operates under its original name. The airline's first flight carried two journalists and some newspapers from London to Amsterdam on May 17, 1920.

Willem II became King of the Netherlands.

The Massachusetts Charter was signed, which established the Province of Massachusetts Bay.

Portuguese explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo discovers Catalina Island off the coast of California.