This day in history
Today is Friday, July 7, the 188th day of 2023. There are 177 days left in the year.
Birthdays: Musician-conductor Doc Severinsen is 96. The Beatles drummer Ringo Starr is 83. Comedian Bill Oddie is 82. Actor Joe Spano is 77. Singer Linda Williams is 76. Actor Shelley Duvall is 74. Actor Roz Ryan is 72. Actor Billy Campbell is 64. Actor-comedian Jim Gaffigan is 57. Actor Robin Weigert is 54. Actor Hamish Linklater is 47. Olympic silver and bronze medal figure skater Michelle Kwan is 43. “Saturday Night Live” comedian Luke Null is 33. Pop musician Ashton Irwin of 5 Seconds to Summer is 29.
▶ In 1846, US annexation of California was proclaimed at Monterey 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 Lincoln: Lewis Powell, 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 1930, construction began on Boulder Dam (later Hoover Dam).
▶ In 1946, Jimmy Carter, 21, married Rosalynn Smith, 18, in Plains, Georgia.
▶ In 1948, six female Navy reservists became the first women to be sworn in to the regular Navy.
▶ In 1976, the US Military Academy at West Point included female cadets for the first time as 119 women joined the Class of 1980.
▶ In 1981, President Reagan announced he was nominating Arizona Judge Sandra Day O’Connor to become the first female justice on the US Supreme Court.
▶ 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 2005, 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.
▶ In 2010, Los Angeles police charged Lonnie Franklin Jr. in the city’s “Grim Sleeper” serial killings. (Franklin, who was sentenced to death for the killings of nine women and a teenage girl, died in prison in March 2020 at the age of 67.)
▶ In 2013, Andy Murray became the first British man in 77 years to win the Wimbledon title, beating Novak Djokovic 6-4, 7-5, 6-4 in the final.
▶ In 2016, Micah Johnson, a Black Army veteran who served in Afghanistan, opened fire on Dallas police, killing five officers in an act of vengeance for the fatal police shootings of Black men; the attack ended with Johnson being killed by a bomb delivered by a police robot.
▶ Last year, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced his resignation after droves of top government officials quit over the latest scandal to engulf him, marking an end to three tumultuous years in which he tried to bluster his way through one ethical lapse after another.