May 7

• May 7, 973
  Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, dies at age 60
• May 7, 1274
  The Second Council of Lyon, 14th ecumenical council, is opened in France to regulate the election of the pope
• May 7, 1583
  The construction of Nesvizh Castle, a residential castle of the Radziwiłł family, is started by Mikołaj Krzysztof "the Orphan" Radziwiłł in Nesvizh, modern-day Belarus
• May 7, 1664
  Building of the Palace of Versailles begins
• May 7, 1697
  The Royal Palace in Stockholm, Sweden, burns down
• May 7, 1718
  City of New Orleans is founded by the French Mississippi Company, under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville in North America
• May 7, 1727
  Jews are expelled from Ukraine by Empress Catherine I of Russia
• May 7, 1763
  Indian chief Pontiac begins his unsuccessful attack on a British fort in present-day Detroit, Michigan
• May 7, 1775
  Turkish state of Bukovina is annexed by Habsburg Monarchy from the Principality of Moldavia
• May 7, 1824
  Beethoven's 9th Symphony, containing the famous a melody inspired by Friedrich Schiller's poem "Ode to Joy", premieres in Vienna and becomes the first example of a major composer using voices in a symphony
• May 7, 1832
  The Treaty of London, signed by Britain, France and Russia, establishes a stable government in Greece, making King of Greece Otto of Bavaria, and defines Greece as an independent kingdom
• July 21, 1832
  Treaty of Constantinople grants Greek independence
• May 7, 1840
  Tornado strikes Natchez Mississippi and kills 317, most of whom are on flatboats
• May 7, 1895
  Russian physicist Alexander Popov presents the paper "On the Relation of Metallic Powders to Electric Oscillations", describing a radio based lightning detector
• May 7, 1896
  Henry Howard Holmes, the first documented American serial killer, murdered over 200 victims, is hanged to death in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• May 7, 1915
  The RMS Lusitania, briefly the world's biggest ship, is torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat, causing the deaths of 1,198 passengers and crew
• May 7, 1934
  Pearl of Lao Tzu, the world's largest pearl with mass of 6.4kg, is found at Palawan, Philippines
• May 7, 1943
  United States 9th Infantry division occupies Bizerte, Tunisia
• May 7, 1954
  French forces of the French Far East Expeditionary Corps surrender to Viet Minh forces at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu during First Indochina War, terminating French involvement in Indochina
• May 7, 1995
  Jacques Chirac wins French presidential election
• May 7, 2010
  Scientists conducting the Neanderthal genome project announce that they have sequenced enough of the Neanderthal genome to suggest that Neanderthals and humans may have interbred