December 7th
* 1724 - Thorn Blood tribunal (de:Thorner Blutgericht), execution of protestant who attacked and demolished Jesuit Church by Poland in Toruń(Thorn)
* 1732 - The Royal Opera House opens at Covent Garden, London.
* 1776 - Marquis de Lafayette attempts to enter the American military as a major general.
* 1787 - Delaware becomes the first state to ratify the US Constitution.
* 1815 - Michel Ney, Marshal of France, is executed by firing squad after having been convicted of treason for his support of Napoleon I.
* 1917 - World War I: The US declares war on Austria-Hungary.
* 1941 - World War II: Canada declared war on Finland, Hungary, Romania, and Japan.
* 1941 - World War II: Attack On Pearl Harbor - The Imperial Japanese Navy attacks the US Pacific Fleet and its defending Army Air Forces and Marine air forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
* 1946 - A fire at the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia kills 119 people.
* 1949 - Chinese Civil War : The government of Republic of China moves from Nanking to Taipei.
* 1962 - Prince Rainier III of Monaco revises the principality's constitution, devolving some of his power to advisory and legislative councils.
* 1965 - Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras simultaneously lift mutual excommunications that had been in place since 1054.
* 1966 - A fire at an army barracks in Erzurum, Turkey kills 68 people.
* 1970 - The first ever general election on the basis of direct adult franchise are held in Pakistan for 313 National Assembly seats.
* 1971 - Pakistan President Yahya Khan announces formation of a Coalition Government at Centre with Nurul Amin as Prime Minister and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto as Vice-Prime Minister.
* 1971 - The Montreux Casino in Switzerland is set ablaze by someone wielding a flare gun during a Frank Zappa concert; the incident would be immortalized in the Deep Purple song "Smoke on the Water".
* 1972 - Apollo 17, the last Apollo moon mission, is launched. The crew take the photograph known as "The Blue Marble" as they leave the Earth.
* 1975 - Indonesia invades East Timor.
* 1982 - In Texas, Charles Brooks, Jr. becomes the first person to be executed by lethal injection in the US.
* 1983 - Iberia Airlines' Boeing 727 collided with Aviaco DC-9 in intense fog when the two airliners taxied down the runway at Madrid Airport killing 93 people.
* 1987 - PSA Flight 1771 crashes near Paso Robles, California, killing all 43 on board, after a disgruntled passenger shoots his ex-boss on the flight, then shoots both pilots and himself.
* 1988 - Spitak Earthquake: In Armenia an earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale kills nearly 25,000, injures 15,000 and leaves 400,000 homeless.
* 1988 - Yasser Arafat recognizes the right of Israel to exist.
* 1989 - In their third and final fight, Sugar Ray Leonard retains the WBC Super-Middleweight Championship of the World, defeating Roberto Duran.
* 1993 - In South Africa, the Transitional Executive Council is established.
* 1993 - The Long Island Rail Road Massacre: Colin Ferguson murders six people and injures 19 others on the LIRR in Nassau County, New York.
* 1995 - The Galileo spacecraft arrives at Jupiter, a little more than six years after it was launched by Space Shuttle Atlantis during Mission STS-34.
* 1995 - 20 people are killed in the Port-au-Prince air disaster
* 2003 - The Conservative Party of Canada is officially recognized after the merger of the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative Party of Canada.
* 2004 - Hamid Karzai is inaugurated as President of Afghanistan.
* 2004 - John Kufuor is re-elected as President of Ghana.
* 2005 - Rigoberto Alpizar, a passenger on American Airlines Flight 924 who allegedly claimed to have a bomb, is shot and killed by a team of US federal air marshals at Miami International Airport.