January 1, 2007

2007Roland Levinsky, South African-English biochemist and academic (born 1943)^[†]

Professor Roland Levinsky was an academic researcher in biomedicine and a university senior manager. His last post, which he held at the time of his death, was as vice-chancellor of the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom.

2007Tillie Olsen, American short story writer (born 1912)^[†]

Tillie Lerner Olsen was an American writer who was associated with the political turmoil of the 1930s and the first generation of American feminists.

2007Bulgaria and Romania join the EU.^[†]

Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern portion of the Balkans directly south of the Danube river and west of the Black Sea. Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey to the south, Serbia and North Macedonia to the west, and Romania to the north. It covers a territory of 110,994 square kilometres (42,855 sq mi) and is the tenth largest within the European Union and the sixteenth-largest country in Europe by area. Sofia is the nation's capital and largest city; other major cities include Burgas, Plovdiv, and Varna.

2007Adam Air Flight 574 breaks apart in mid-air and crashes near the Makassar Strait, Indonesia, killing all 102 people on board.^[†]

Adam Air Flight 574 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight operated by Adam Air between the Indonesian cities of Jakarta, Surabaya, and Manado that crashed into the Makassar Strait near Polewali in Sulawesi on 1 January 2007. All 102 people on board were killed, making it the deadliest aviation accident involving a Boeing 737-400. After this, Adam Air faced intense scrutiny by the Indonesian government, which launched a national investigation into the disaster. The government's final report, released on 25 March 2008, concluded that the pilots lost control of the aircraft after they became preoccupied with troubleshooting the inertial navigation system and inadvertently disconnected the autopilot. Despite a series of safety incidents, which contributed to the shut down of Adam Air in 2008, this was the only incident resulting in fatalities during the airline's 5-year existence.