TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Sunday, July 7, the 188th day of 2019. There are 177 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On July 7, 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.

On this date:

■ In 1846, U.S. annexation of California was proclaimed at Monterey (mahn-tuhRAY’) after the surrender of a Mexican garrison.

■ In 1865, four people were hanged in Washington, D.C. for conspiring with John Wilkes Booth to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln: Lewis Powell (aka Lewis Payne), David Herold, George Atzerodt and Mary Surratt, the first woman to be executed by the federal government.

■ In 1898, the United States annexed Hawaii.

■ In 1937, the Second SinoJapanese War erupted into full-scale conflict as Imperial Japanese forces attacked the Marco Polo Bridge in Beijing.

■ In 1948, six female U.S. Navy reservists became the first women to be sworn in to the regular Navy.

■ In 1954, Elvis Presley made his radio debut as Memphis, Tennessee, station WHBQ played his first recording for Sun Records, “That’s All Right.”

■ In 1963, a Navy jet fighter from Willow Grove Naval Air Station in Pennsylvania crashed into a picnic area, killing seven people; the pilot, who ejected, survived.

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

■ In 1975, the daytime drama “Ryan’s Hope” premiered on ABC-TV.

■ In 1976, President Gerald R. Ford and the first lady hosted a White House dinner for Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. The United States Military Academy at West Point included female cadets for the first time as 119 women joined the Class of 1980.

■ In 1990, the first “Three Tenors” concert took place as opera stars Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras performed amid the brick ruins of Rome’s Baths of Caracalla on the eve of the World Cup championship.

■ In 2004, former Enron chairman Kenneth Lay was indicted on criminal charges related to the energy company’s collapse. (Lay was later convicted of fraud and conspiracy, but died in July 2006 before he could be sentenced.)

Thought for Today: “Memory depends very much on the perspicuity, regularity, and order of our thoughts. Many complain of the want of memory, when the defect is in their judgment; and others, by grasping at all, retain nothing.”—Margaret Fuller, American critic and social reformer (1810-1850).