On Feb. 7, 1775, Benjamin Franklin published “An Imaginary Speech” in London, responding to comments made to the Parliament that the British need not fear the colonial rebels, as “Americans are unequal to the People of this Country in Devotion to Women, and in Courage, and worse than all, they are religious.” In his thoughtful counter, Franklin slyly recalled that the population in the colonies had increased, while the British population had declined, and, therefore, American men must be more “effectually devoted to the Fair Sex” than their British brethren.
On Feb. 7, 1907, the first large march – known as ”the Mud March” – was organized by Britain’s National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), with more than 3,000 women slogging through the cold, muddy streets of London, from Hyde Park to Exeter Hall, to advocate for women’s suffrage.
On Feb. 7, 1990, the Central Committee of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union agreed to endorse President Mikhail Gorbachev’s recommendation that the party give up its 70-year monopoly on political power. A Communist Party official noted, “Society itself will decide whether it wishes to adopt our politics.”