July 7 in Military History

Congress rescinds all treaties with France and authorizes the Navy to attack French vessels, beginning the undeclared Quasi-War that becomes the first test of the young U.S. Navy.

Commodore John Drake Sloat raises the American flag over Monterey, California, claiming the territory for the United States during the Mexican-American War.

Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia begins its retreat from Gettysburg in a driving rainstorm, the wagon train of wounded stretching for seventeen miles.

President William McKinley signs the Newlands Resolution annexing the Republic of Hawaii, formalizing U.S. control of the islands and the deep-water anchorage at Pearl Harbor that would anchor Pacific naval strategy for the next century.

The U.S. Navy converted yacht USS Eagle operates off the Cuban coast in support of the blockade of Santiago, the kind of small-combatant operation that revealed the weakness of Spanish coastal defenses during the Spanish-American War.

A clash between Japanese and Chinese troops at the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing triggers the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Asian theater of World War II that will kill over 20 million people.

The 1st Marine Brigade (Provisional) lands at Reykjavik to relieve the British 49th Infantry Division, an unprecedented peacetime deployment of U.S. forces to a combat theater that signaled American commitment to the Battle of the Atlantic.

After three weeks of savage fighting, the island of Saipan in the Marianas is declared secured, giving the U.S. airfields within B-29 range of the Japanese home islands.

Ten-year-old Samantha Smith arrives in Moscow on a goodwill visit initiated by Soviet leader Yuri Andropov, a cultural counterpoint to the intense U.S.-Soviet nuclear tensions of the Able Archer year.

Four suicide bombers detonate explosives on three London Underground trains and a bus during morning rush hour, killing 52 people and injuring over 700 in the deadliest terrorist attack on British soil.