Daily Herald | Posted: Tuesday, July 7, 2009 8:00 am
Today is Tuesday, July 7, the 188th day of 2009. There are 177 days left in the year.
Today's Highlight in History:
July 7, 1865, four people were hanged in Washington, D.C., for conspiring with John Wilkes Booth to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln.
On this date:
In 1898, the United States annexed Hawaii.
In 1919, the first Transcontinental Motor Convoy, in which a U.S. Army convoy of motorized vehicles crossed the United States, departed Washington, D.C. (The trip ended in San Francisco on Sept. 6, 1919.)
In 1930, construction began on Boulder Dam (later Hoover Dam).
In 1948, six female reservists became the first women to be sworn into the regular U.S. Navy.
In 1981, President Ronald Reagan announced he was nominating Arizona Judge Sandra Day O'Connor to become the first female justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 1983, 11-year-old Samantha Smith of Manchester, Maine, left for a visit to the Soviet Union at the personal invitation of Soviet leader Yuri V. Andropov.
In 2005, suicide terrorist bombings in three Underground stations and a double-decker bus killed 52 victims and four bombers in the worst attack on London since World War II.
Today's Birthdays: Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough is 76. Former Beatles drummer Ringo Starr is 69. Pop singer David Hodo (The Village People) is 62. Olympic silver and bronze medal figure skater Michelle Kwan is 29.
The Associated Press