On this day: March 7

Events on March 7

• 161 Marcus Aurelius and L. Commodus (who changes his name to Lucius Verus) become joint emperors of Rome on the death of Antoninus Pius. Wikipedia
• 321 Emperor Constantine I decreed that Sunday, the day honoring the sun god Sol Invictus, would be the Roman day of rest. Wikipedia
• 1277 Bishop Étienne Tempier promulgated a condemnation of 219 heretical propositions that were being discussed at the University of Paris. Wikipedia
• 1573 A peace treaty brought the Ottoman–Venetian War to an end, ceding Cyprus from the Republic of Venice to the Ottoman Empire. Wikipedia
• 1799 Napoleon Bonaparte captures Jaffa in Palestine and his troops proceed to kill more than 2,000 Albanian captives. Wikipedia
• 1814 War of the Sixth Coalition: Napoleon's army forced Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov's Russian troops to withdraw from the Chemin des Dames, but French casualties exceeded Russian losses. Wikipedia
• 1850 United States senator Daniel Webster delivered a speech advocating compromise on slavery, which proved to be unpopular with abolitionists in his home state. Wikipedia
• 1871 José Paranhos, Viscount of Rio Branco, began a four-year premiership as Prime Minister of the Empire of Brazil, the longest in the state's history. Wikipedia
• 1876 Alexander Graham Bell is granted a patent for an invention he calls the "telephone". Wikipedia
• 1900 The German ocean liner SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse became the first ship to send a wireless telegraph message to an onshore receiver. Wikipedia
• 1921 The short-lived socialist Labin Republic is proclaimed. Wikipedia
• 1931 The Parliament House of Finland is officially inaugurated in Helsinki, Finland. Wikipedia
• 1936 Nazi German forces re-occupied the demilitarized Rhineland, violating both the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Treaties that were signed after World War I. Wikipedia
• 1941 The German submarine U-47, one of the most successful U-boats of World War II, disappeared with 45 men on board. Wikipedia
• 1945 World War II: At the beginning of the Battle of Remagen, Allied forces unexpectedly captured the Ludendorff Bridge, which possibly hastened the war's conclusion. Wikipedia
• 1965 Unarmed civil rights activists marching from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, were attacked by police on "Bloody Sunday". Wikipedia
• 1968 Vietnam War: The United States and South Vietnam began Operation Truong Cong Dinh to sweep the area surrounding the Mekong Delta town of Mỹ Tho to root out Viet Cong forces in the area. Wikipedia
• 1971 Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, political leader of then East Pakistan (present day-Bangladesh), delivers his historic 7th March speech in the Racecourse Field (Now Suhrawardy Udyan) in Dhaka. Wikipedia
• 1985 The charity single "We Are the World" by the supergroup USA for Africa was released, and went on to sell more than 20 million copies. Wikipedia
• 1986 Challenger Disaster: Divers from the USS Preserver locate the crew cabin of Challenger on the ocean floor. Wikipedia
• 1990 Teachers in West Virginia began a labor strike that involved several thousand educators across the state. Wikipedia
• 2007 Garuda Indonesia Flight 200 crashes at Adisutjipto International Airport in the Special Region of Yogyakarta, Indonesia, killing 21 people. Wikipedia
• 2009 The Kepler space telescope, designed to discover Earth-like planets orbiting other stars, was launched. Wikipedia
• 2009 Dissident Irish republican campaign: Two off-duty British Army soldiers were shot dead by Real IRA paramilitaries outside Massereene Barracks in Antrim, Northern Ireland. Wikipedia
• 2021 A series of four explosions at a military barracks in Bata, Equatorial Guinea caused at least 107 deaths. Wikipedia
• 2024 Sweden officially joins NATO, becoming its 32nd member. Wikipedia

Born on March 7

• 189 Publius Septimius Geta, Roman emperor (died 211) Wikipedia
• 1693 Clement XIII, pope of the Catholic Church (died 1769) Wikipedia
• 1765 Nicéphore Niépce, French inventor, invented photography (died 1833) Wikipedia
• 1785 Alessandro Manzoni, Italian author and poet (died 1873) Wikipedia
• 1792 John Herschel, English mathematician and astronomer (died 1871) Wikipedia
• 1850 Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, Austrian-Czech politician, 1st President of Czechoslovakia (died 1937) Wikipedia
• 1857 Julius Wagner-Jauregg, Austrian physician and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1940) Wikipedia
• 1872 Piet Mondrian, Dutch-American painter (died 1944) Wikipedia
• 1875 Maurice Ravel, French pianist, composer, and conductor (died 1937) Wikipedia
• 1904 Reinhard Heydrich, German SS officer and a principle architect of the Holocaust (died 1942) Wikipedia
• 1908 Anna Magnani, Italian actress (died 1973) Wikipedia
• 1936 Georges Perec, French author (died 1982) Wikipedia
• 1938 David Baltimore, American biologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2025) Wikipedia
• 1956 Bryan Cranston, American actor, director, and producer Wikipedia
• 1960 Ivan Lendl, Czech tennis player and coach Wikipedia
• 1963 E. L. James, English author Wikipedia
• 1964 Bret Easton Ellis, American author and screenwriter Wikipedia
• 1970 Rachel Weisz, English actress Wikipedia
• 1980 Laura Prepon, American actress Wikipedia
• 1984 Mathieu Flamini, French footballer Wikipedia
• 1994 Jordan Pickford, English footballer Wikipedia
• 1998 Amanda Gorman, American poet and activist Wikipedia

Died on March 7

• 161 Antoninus Pius, Roman emperor (born 86) Wikipedia
• 1274 Saint Thomas Aquinas, Italian priest and philosopher (born 1225) Wikipedia
• 1625 Johann Bayer, German lawyer and cartographer (born 1572) Wikipedia
• 1724 Pope Innocent XIII (born 1655) Wikipedia
• 1931 Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Finnish artist (born 1865) Wikipedia
• 1932 Aristide Briand, French journalist and politician, Prime Minister of France, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1862) Wikipedia
• 1954 Otto Diels, German chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1876) Wikipedia
• 1967 Alice B. Toklas, American writer (born 1877) Wikipedia
• 1975 Mikhail Bakhtin, Russian philosopher and critic (born 1895) Wikipedia
• 1988 Divine, American drag queen and film actor (born 1945) Wikipedia
• 1997 Edward Mills Purcell, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1912) Wikipedia
• 1999 Stanley Kubrick, American director, producer, and screenwriter (born 1928) Wikipedia
• 2006 Gordon Parks, American photographer, director, and composer (born 1912) Wikipedia
• 2013 Damiano Damiani, Italian director and screenwriter (born 1922) Wikipedia

Holidays and observances

• Christian feast day: Blessed Leonid Feodorov (Russian Greek Catholic Church) Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: María Antonia de Paz y Figueroa Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Perpetua and Felicity Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Siméon-François Berneux (part of The Korean Martyrs) Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Teresa Margaret of the Sacred Heart Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: March 7 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics) Wikipedia
• Maritime Day in Slovenia Wikipedia

Sources

• Wikipedia — “March 7” — events, births, deaths and observances (text under CC BY-SA 4.0) (checked 2026-10-15)
• Wikipedia — “Selected anniversaries/March 7” — the anniversaries editors chose for the date and the article each one is about (checked 2026-10-15)
• Wikidata — in how many language editions each entry's own article exists, used to fill the lists (CC0) (checked 2026-10-15)
• vacanza/holidays (open-source holiday rules, MIT licence) — holiday rules used to build the lists (checked 2026-10-15)

The events, births, deaths and observances above are from the English Wikipedia article “March 7” and the articles it links to (authors and history), retrieved 2026-10-15 through the Wikimedia “On this day” feed. They are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0; this selection is shared under the same licence. Every anniversary that Wikipedia's editors selected for March 7 stays on the list; the remaining places, up to 26 events, 22 births and 14 deaths, go to the entries whose own article — about the event itself, or else the person or thing it is about — appears in the most language editions (counted from Wikidata); an article about a person or thing, which covers far more than one day, counts half. An entry with no article of its own counts, also at half, by the least covered article it links, and one that links only places counts for nothing. Each list runs by year, and the wording is unchanged apart from removing references to pictures, audio and video.