What happened today in history on October 7th?
In 1765, the Stamp Act Congress met in New York City, New York to protest against the Stamp Act. In the same year, British Prime Minister George Grenville (1712-1770) introduced the Stamp Act, the first tax on American colonies to pay off the debt that had built up from the French and Indian War. The act required colonists to purchase special revenue stamps for various legal documents, newspapers, and even playing cards. Anything that was made of paper needed the stamp for it to be sold. The colonists strongly opposed the Stamp Act, arguing that Parliament didn’t have the right to tax them because they didn’t have representation or a voice in the British Parliament. The famous phrase, “No Taxation Without Representation”, was used by the colonists to protest the tax that the British Parliament put on the colonies to pay for the French and Indian War. Parliament believed that the colonists should help pay off the debt because the British fought the war to protect the colonies in North America. This created widespread protests, boycotts, and general disarray in the public life, with colonists refusing to pay the tax and required stamps being withheld. The Congress was called by the Massachusetts House of Representatives, bringing together delegates from nine colonies to create a coordinated colonial response to the tax. The delegates drafted the document, stating that taxation without representation was a violation of their rights. It also included petitions to the King and Parliament for relief from the Stamp Act. This was a key step in the road to the American Revolution and would make the colonists begin to hate the British government.
In 1849, famous poet, Edgar Allen Poe, died today at 5:00 am on a Sunday morning. His death still remains a mystery and still is debated to this day. The author was found delirious and disheveled at a tavern in Baltimore, Maryland, on October 3rd, just 4 days away from his death. Theories around his death include suicide, murder, cholera, hypoglycemia (when blood sugar drops below normal), rabies, syphilis, tuberculosis, influenza, brain tumor and that Poe was a victim of cooping (where a group of people makes someone vote for a candidate over and over). Poe is famous for his literary works of “The Raven”, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Cask of Amontillado”, “The Black Cat”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, and “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”.
In 1959, Soviet satellite, Luna 3, took the first close-up of the far side of the Moon. The photo was taken at 03:30 UT at a distance of about 39,457 miles (63,500 kilometers) after Luna 3 had passed the Moon and looked back at the sunlit far side. A total of 29 photos were taken, covering 70% of the far side. The photographs were low resolution and very noisy, but features could be recognized. In 1968, astronauts of the Apollo 8 mission would be the first ever people to see the far side of the Moon with their own eyes.
In 2001, the U.S. launches military operations against the Taliban government and al-Qaeda in response to the September 11th attacks. Al-Qaeda was a terrorist organization led by Osama bin Ladan and they were the group who committed the September 11th attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. The initial goal was to dismantle al-Qaeda and remove the Taliban from the power for providing them sanctuary. This operation was called “Operation Enduring Freedom” by the US government. Osama bin Laden was finally killed by U.S. forces on May 1st, 2011, but tensions grew with the United States and Afghanistan, causing the war to continue on until August 30th, 2021, when the war ended and troops withdrew from Afghanistan.
These were some of the important events that occurred today in history and there is still more to learn with each day.
