Today is Monday, July 7, the 189th day of 2008. There are 177 days left in the year. On this date in

Today is Monday, July 7, the 189th day of 2008. There are 177 days left in the year. On this date in 1865, four people are hanged in Washington, D.C., for conspiring with John Wilkes Booth to assassinate President Lincoln.

In 1807, Napoleon I of France and Czar Alexander I of Russia sign a treaty at Tilsit ending war between their empires. In 1898, the United States annexes Hawaii. In 1908, the Democratic National Convention opens in Denver. In 1930, construction begins on Boulder Dam (later Hoover Dam). In 1948, six female reservists become the first women to be sworn into the regular U.S. Navy. In 1981, President Reagan announces he is 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, leaves 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 kill 52 victims and four bombers in the worst attack on London since World War II.

July 7, 1983: Former Cleveland Mayor Dennis Kucinich comes in first in an eight-candidate city council race in the city, but says he faces a tough run-off election for the 12th Ward seat because City Hall is against him.

July 7, 1968: Gus Hall, general secretary of the American Communist party (who was in the Youngstown-Warren area in the 1940s) will be the party’s first presidential candidate in 28 years.

July 7, 1958: Attorneys for the billboard industry say they will challenge a bill signed by Ohio Gov. William O’Neill banning billboards within 660 feet of new interstate highways.

A 40-year-old ex-convict and former rest home operator is arrested as the lone bandit who has terrorized Youngstown area business over two weeks.

July 7, 1933: Donald Richberg, general counsel of the recovery administration, warns that if American business fumbles the opportunity for self-government under the national recovery act, “the advance of political control over private industry is inevitable.”