Years Ago

Today is Wednesday, July 7, the 188th day of 2010. There are 177 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1846: U.S. annexation of California is proclaimed at Monterey after the surrender of a Mexican garrison.

1865: Four people are hanged in Washington, D.C., for conspiring with John Wilkes Booth to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln.

1898: The United States annexes Hawaii.

1908: The Democratic national convention, which nominates William Jennings Bryan for president, opens in Denver.

1919: The first Transcontinental Motor Convoy, in which a U.S. Army convoy of motorized vehicles crosses the United States, departs Washington, D.C. (The trip ends in San Francisco on Sept. 6, 1919.)

1930: Construction begins on Boulder Dam (later Hoover Dam).

1948: Six female reservists become the first women to be sworn into the regular U.S. Navy.

1969: Canada’s House of Commons gives final approval to the Official Languages Act, making French equal to English throughout the national government.

1981: President Ronald Reagan announces he is nominating Arizona Judge Sandra Day O’Connor to become the first female justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

VINDICATOR FILES

1985: A permanent Torch of Freedom is lighted at Hillcrest Memorial Park in Hermitage, a tribute to eight American servicemen killed in an ill-fated attempt to free the Iranian hostages.

The Rev. Anthony Esposito is named pastor of St. Rose Parish in Girard.

Friends of the Warren Library open their book sale with more than 7,000 donated volumes on sale.

1970: The Mahoning County grand jury expresses shock that 36 of the 75 true bills it returned were narcotic related, and issues a recommendation that Youngstown pursue “some kind of handgun control.”

Twenty-four women employed at the Youngstown Credit Bureau, members of Local 450, Professional Employees International Union, go on strike seeking an increase in their wage of $1.85 an hour. They picket the Home Savings and Loan Co. building, where the Credit Bureau has offices on the ninth floor.

1960: Lt. Walter E. Jenning, 28, formerly of Youngstown, is among 17 Navy men missing after a 403-foot long Navy blimp crashes in the Atlantic Ocean off Lakehurst, N.J.

Albert Leyshon Jr., 18, a Youngstown youth who was apparently headed home after riding the rails West, is killed by a speeding passenger train at Madison, Wisc.

Edward Smith, 91, a retired painter, dies after being seriously burned when a cigarette ignited his bed in a rooming house at 411 Ω North Ave.

1935: Police Chief Leroy Goodwin says police will not tolerate questionable games of chance at the Pyatt Street carnival. Mayor Mark Moore issued a license for the carnival despite an earlier announcement that no carnivals would be given permission to operate.

Mahoning County Relief Director R.A. Noble calls a meeting of all department heads to discuss ways of cutting Mahoning County’s relief expenditures for August by 50 percent.