ON THIS DATE

Today is Saturday, July 7, the 189th day of 2012. 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.

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

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

1987: Lt. Col. Oliver North begins his long-awaited public testimony at the Iran-Contra hearing, telling Congress that he had “never carried out a single act, not one,” without authorization.

VINDICATOR FILES

1987: Youngstown area state Reps. Robert F. Hagan and June Lucas insist that entire content of a General Electric Co. report be released as part of public hearings on the proposed construction of the Perry Nuclear Power Plant.

A $1 increase in title fees for new and used cars will be used to computerize Trumbull County’s title department.

Lordstown Village Council votes 3-2 against a proposed 911 emergency dispatching service in Trumbull county.

1972: Vindicator Business Editor George R. Reiss reports that at the halfway mark, 1972 looks like a fairly good year for the steel industry, maybe even a superior one.

The Youngstown Board of Education adopts a general fund budget of $23.7 million for 1973, about the same as a year earlier.

General Contracting bids for the new library at Youngstown State University exceed $4 million, about $400,000 more than the state architect’s office estimated.

1962: Charles B. Cushwa, a member of the Youngstown Civil Service Commission, says donations will be sought to pay Western Reserve University to prepare examinations for the police department after city council refuses to pay for them.

An 18-year-old East Side boy playing with what he thought was an unloaded automatic pistol dies of a sing gunshot wound. Dead is Thomas Pettiford Jr.

During a meeting at the Youngstown Club, the Youngstown Merchants Council asks the FBI to lend its forces to investigating unsolved mob bombings in the city.

1937: Cleveland police say the headless body of a man pulled from the Cuyahoga River is the 10th victim of the “torso murderer.”

Lillian Piper, 22, is dead and her escort, Clyde Woody seriously wounded following an early morning argument at the end of a date. Police believe Woody shot her, then himself; Woody told police it was the other way around.

With 63 open hearths in operation, Youngstown area mills are operating a levels of 76 percent.