January 7

On This Day In History
	1610: Galileo's discovery of Jupiter's four moons During this month in 1610, Italian astronomer Galileo made the earthshaking discoveries that four moons revolve around Jupiter and that the telescope reveals many more stars than are visible to the naked eye.
Two of Galileo's first telescopes; in the Institute and Museum of the History of Science, Florence.
Biography Of The Day
	1989 Emperor Hirohito—the longest-reigning monarch in Japanese history, who was enthroned in 1926, ruled during World War II and in democratic postwar Japan, and died this day in 1989—was succeeded by his son Akihito.
Hirohito, 1982.
More Events On This Day In History
2003	By presidential decree, Christmas—this day on the Coptic Orthodox calendar—was celebrated for the first time as a national holiday in Egypt, an almost entirely Muslim country.
	2001 John Kufuor was inaugurated as president of Ghana in that country's first peaceful transition from one elected government to another.
1968	Unmanned U.S. space probe Surveyor 7 was launched and, a few days later, made a soft landing on the Moon.
	1955 American contralto Marian Anderson first performed with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
	1891 Zora Neale Hurston, an American folklorist and writer associated with the Harlem Renaissance who celebrated black culture of the rural South, was born.
	1844 St. Bernadette, the French girl whose visions led to the founding of the shrine of Lourdes, was born in that town.
	1800 Millard Fillmore, the 13th U.S. president, was born.