Today in 1782 George Washington orders the creation of the Badge of Military Merit to honor soldiers wounded in battle. It is later renamed to the more poetic Purple Heart.

August 7 is the 219th day of the year (220th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 146 days remaining until the end of the year.

Our on this day in history archives contain over 200,000 events, birthdays and deaths from 6,000 years of history. Here is a roundup of a few of them:

EVENTS

322 BC - Battle of Crammon between Athens and Macedon.

461 - Roman Emperor Majorian is beheaded near the river Iria in northwestern Italy.

626 - The Avar and Slav armies leave the Siege of Constantinople.

768 - Pope Stephen III is elected.

936 - Coronation of King Otto I of Germany.

1316 - Pope John XXII is elected.

1420 - Building of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, Italy begins.

1461 - Ming Dynasty Chinese general Cao Qin stages a coup against the Tianshun Emperor.

1588 - The English Navy defeats the Spanish Armada.

1679 – The brigantine Le Griffon, which was commissioned by René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, is towed to the southern end of the Niagara River, to become the first ship to sail the upper Great Lakes of North America.

1714 - Battle of Gangut: First important victory in the Russian Navy.

1782 – George Washington orders the creation of the Badge of Military Merit to honor soldiers wounded in battle. It is later renamed to the more poetic Purple Heart.

1789 - The United States Department of War is established.

1794 – Whiskey Rebellion begins: Farmers in the Monoghaela Valley of Pennsylvania rebel against the federal tax on liquor and distilled drinks.

1819 – Simón Bolívar triumphed over Spain in the Battle of Boyacá.

1858 - The first Australian rules football match is played between Melbourne Grammar and Scotch College.

1879 - Opening of the Poor Man's Palace in Manchester, England.

1884 - Germany takes control of Southwest Africa, present-day Namibia.

1888 - In the US, Theophilus Van Kannel is given a patent for the Revolving door.

1901 – 2000

1909 - Alice Huyler Ramsey and three friends become the first women to make a transcontinental car journey, reaching San Francisco, California after setting off from New York City on June 9.

1927 – Peace Bridge opens, between Fort Erie, Ontario and Buffalo, New York.

1930 - The last confirmed lynchings of African Americans in the Northern United States take place in Marion, Indiana.

1933 - Simele Massacre: Iraqi government forces slaughter over 3,000 Assyrians in the village of Simele.

1942 – World War II: Battle of Guadalcanal begins - US Marines initiate the first American offensive of the war with a landing on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.

1944 – IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (known best as the Harvard Mark I).

1947 – Thor Heyerdahl's balsa wood raft the Kon-Tiki, smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands after a 101-day 7,000 km (4,300 mile) journey across the Pacific Ocean proving that pre-historic peoples could have traveled from South America.

1953 – Ohio admitted to the union, retroactive to 1803 (this is disputed by some).

1959 – Explorer program: The United States launches Explorer 6 from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

1960 – Côte d'Ivoire becomes independent.

1964 – Vietnam War: The United States Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution giving US President Lyndon B. Johnson broad war powers to deal with North Vietnamese attacks on American forces.

1964 - Prometheus, a bristlecone pine and the oldest tree in the world, is cut down.

1965 – Singapore is expelled and separated from the Federation of Malaysia.

1967 – Vietnam War: The People's Republic of China agrees to give North Vietnam and undisclosed amount of aid in the form of a grant.

1971 - Apollo 15 returns to Earth after a mission to the Moon.

1972 - Idi Amin gives all Asian people in Uganda 90 days to leave.

1974 – French tight-rope walker Philippe Petit crosses from one tower to the other at New York City's World Trade Center.

1976 – Viking program: Viking 2 enters into orbit around Mars.

1978 – United States President Jimmy Carter declares a federal emergency at Love Canal.

1981 – The Washington Star ceases all operations after 128 years of publication.

1983 - The first World Athletics Championships begin in Helsinki, Finland.

1985 – Takao Doi, Mamoru Mori, and Chiaki Mukai are chosen as Japan's first astronauts.

1987 – American swimmer Lynne Cox crosses the so-called 'Ice Curtain' between Alaska (US), and the Soviet Union's far east.

1989 – US Congressman Mickey Leland (D-TX), and 15 others die in a plane crash in Ethiopia.

1990 – At 12:34:56 (both AM and PM) the time and date by British reckoning was 12:34:56 7/8/90.

1990 - César Gaviria becomes President of Colombia.

1994 - Ernesto Samper becomes President of Colombia.

1997 – Fine Air Flight 101, a cargo flight from Miami to Santo Domingo crashes onto NW 72nd Ave near Miami International Airport, killing five people.

1998 - Andrés Pastrana Arango becomes President of Colombia.

1998 – 1998 U.S. embassy bombings: Bombing of the United States embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya kills 224 people and injures over 4,500.

1999 - Southern Russia: Chechnya-based Islamic International Brigade invades nearby Dagestan.

2000 - US presidential candidate Al Gore chooses Joe Lieberman as his running mate.

2000 - Saturn's moon Ymir is discovered.

From 2001

2002 - Alvaro Uribe becomes President of Colombia.

2005 - The biggest bank robbery in Brazilian history takes place when 150 million Real (equivalent of 52 million Euros) are stolen from a bank in Fortaleza in the northeast of the country.

2007 - Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants breaks baseball great Hank Aaron's record by hitting his 756th home run.

2008 – The Republic of Georgia carries out a military offensive in South Ossetia.

2009 – Typhoon Morakot hits Taiwan.

2010 - Juan Manuel Santos becomes President of Colombia.

2012 - 3 gunmen kill 19 people in a church in Okene, Nigeria.

2018 - US President Donald Trump imposes new sanctions (restrictions) on Iran.

2018 - Ivan Duque becomes President of Colombia.