Template:On This Day (nonfiction)/May 7

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  1700: Physician Gerard van Swieten born.

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  1794: French Revolution: Robespierre introduces the Cult of the Supreme Being in the National Convention as the new state religion of the French First Republic.

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  1832: Mathematician Carl Gottfried Neumann born. He will study physics with his father, and later work as a mathematician, dealing almost exclusively with problems arising from physics.

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  1860: Electrical engineer and inventor Oliver Blackburn Shallenberger born. He will invent the first successful alternating current electrical meter, which will be critical to the general acceptance of AC power.

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  1895: Russian physicist Alexander Stepanovich Popov demonstrates to the Russian Physical and Chemical Society his invention, the Popov lightning detector — a primitive radio receiver.

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  1895: First publication of The Time Machine by H. G. Wells.

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  1896: Serial killer H. H. Holmes is executed for the murder of his friend and accomplice Benjamin Pitezel.

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  1960: Cold War: U-2 Crisis of 1960: Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announces that his nation is holding American U-2 pilot Gary Powers.