This Year in History:
1907
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
On May 12, 1907, Katharine Hepburn, who due to her performances in such films as The Philadelphia Story and On Golden Pond, will become one of the most celebrated actresses of the 20th century, is born in Hartford, Connecticut. The daughter of New England intellectuals who stressed rigorous exercise and independent thinking, Hepburn studied at […]
John Wayne, an actor who came to epitomize the American West, is born in Winterset, Iowa. Born Marion Robert Morrison, Wayne’s family moved to Glendale, California, when he was six years old. As a teen, he rose at four in the morning to deliver newspapers, and after school he played football and made deliveries for […]
Gene Autry, perhaps the greatest singing cowboy of all time, is born on September 29, 1907, in Tioga, Texas. While still a boy, Autry moved with his family to a ranch in Oklahoma where he learned to play the guitar and sing. The young Autry was quickly attracted to a new style of music that […]
Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory collectively enter the United States as Oklahoma, the 46th state. Oklahoma, with a name derived from the Choctaw Indian words okla, meaning “people,” and humma, meaning “red,” has a history of human occupation dating back 15,000 years. The first Europeans to visit the region were Spanish explorers in the 16th […]
In West Virginia’s Marion County, an explosion in a network of mines owned by the Fairmont Coal Company in Monongah kills 361 coal miners. It was the worst mining disaster in American history. In 1883, the creation of the Norfolk and Western Railway opened a gateway to the untapped coalfields of southwestern West Virginia. New […]
