On This Day, July 7: Florida jury rules against Big Tobacco – UPI.com

In 1865, four people convicted of conspiring with John Wilkes Booth in the assassination of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln were hanged in Washington.

In 1898, U.S. President William McKinley signed a joint resolution of Congress authorizing the annexation of Hawaii by the United States.

In 1930, construction began on the Giant Boulder Dam, which in 1947 was renamed the Hoover Dam.

In 1946, Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini (1850-1917) became the first American to be canonized a saint in the Roman Catholic Church.

In 1976, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in New York enrolled female cadets for the first time in the institution’s then-174-year-old history.

In 1981, Sandra Day O’Connor was chosen by U.S. President Ronald Reagan to become the first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court. She was unanimously approved by the Senate.

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In 1999, a Miami-Dade County jury held the leading tobacco companies liable for various illnesses of Florida smokers. The class-action lawsuit, filed in 1994, was the first of its kind to reach trial.

In 2005, terrorists struck the London transit system, setting off explosions in three subway cars and a double-decker bus in coordinated rush-hour attacks. Fifty-two people were killed and more than 700 injured.

In 2010, a Paris court sentenced former Panama ruler Manuel Noriega to seven years in prison for money laundering. He was convicted of funneling about $3 million of Colombian drug money into French bank accounts.

In 2012, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts married his longtime partner, Jim Ready, in a ceremony officiated by Gov. Deval Patrick. He was the first member of Congress to publicly come out as gay and first to marry a same-sex partner while in office.

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In 2013, Andy Murray became the first British player in 77 years to win the men’s singles title at Wimbledon, defeating Serb Novak Djokovic in straight sets in the championship match.

In 2016, a gunman opened fire at an otherwise peaceful Black Lives Matter rally in Dallas, killing four police officers and one transit officer, and injuring seven others. Police killed the gunmen, who was holed up in a parking garage, using a robot strapped with an explosive.

In 2017, Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors produced its first mass-market vehicle, the Model 3.

In 2020, the Trump administration sent formal notice to Congress and the United Nations that the United States was withdrawing from the World Health Organization over its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and China’s role in it. Newly inaugurated President Joe Biden reversed the withdrawal in one of his first acts as leader in January 2021.

In 2022, after months of scandal and calls for his resignation, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson agreed to step down.

In 2023, the U.S. Defense Department announced it destroyed the last of the country’s arsenal of chemical weapons, completing a decades-long process as part of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

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