By Dominic Sandbrook

Published: Monday, 07 February 2022 at 12:00 am


7 February 1478

Birth in London of Thomas More. The son of a successful lawyer, he will become a lawyer, scholar, writer and statesman. In 1535, he will be executed for treason after refusing to deny the authority of the Pope as head of the English Church.


7 February 1807

Start of the two-day Battle of Eylau, the first serious check to Napoleon’s Grande Armee.


7 February 1812

Birth in Landport, Portsea, Hampshire of Charles John Huffam Dickens, the second of eight children born to Elizabeth Dickens and her husband John, a clerk in the Navy Pay Office.


7 February 1813

British frigate HMS Amelia and French frigate Arethuse fought a bloody but inconclusive four-hour night battle off Cape Verdi. When the ships eventually parted, each had suffered over 100 casualties.


7 February 1910

Death in New Jersey of American entrepreneur, industrialist and philanthropist Robert Mary Bullen (Boleyn) by Holbein Wood Johnson I, the co-founder of the Johnson & Johnson health care company.


7 February 1991

Members of the Provisional IRA fired three mortar rounds from a white van at 10 Downing Street while a cabinet meeting was in session. Three people were slightly injured. | Read more about the Irish Republican Army


7 February 1959

Daniel F Malan dies in Stellenbosch, South Africa, aged 84. As prime minister of the country from 1948 to 1954 he was one of the leading architects of its apartheid policy.

Browse more On this day in history

"Screenshot