Today is Friday, Sept. 17, the 261st day of 2004. There are 105 days left in the year. On this date

Today is Friday, Sept. 17, the 261st day of 2004. There are 105 days left in the year. On this date in 1787, the Constitution of the United States is completed and signed by a majority of delegates attending the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
In 1862, Union forces hurl back a Confederate invasion of Maryland in the Civil War Battle of Antietam. In 1920, the American Professional Football Association -- a precursor of the National Football League -- is formed in Canton, Ohio. In 1939, the Soviet Union invades Poland, more than two weeks after Nazi Germany launches its assault. In 1944, during World War II, Allied paratroopers launch Operation Market Garden, landing behind German lines in the Netherlands. The Allies, however, encounter fierce German resistance. In 1948, the United Nations mediator for Palestine, Count Folke Bernadotte, is assassinated in Jerusalem by Jewish extremists. In 1964, the situation comedy "Bewitched" premieres on ABC. In 1976, NASA publicly unveiles the space shuttle Enterprise at ceremonies in Palmdale, Calif. In 1978, after meeting at Camp David, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat sign a framework for a peace treaty. In 1984, Progressive Conservative leader Brian Mulroney takes office as Canada's 18th prime minister. In 1996, former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew dies in Berlin, Md., at age 77.
September 17, 1979: A joy ride by three coeds on a rain-swollen stream at Edinboro State College ends in tragedy when the girls' raft overturns. Deborah Day of Erie drowns when she was sucked through an underground drain pipe.
Four children and four adults bet their lives on a hot air balloon made of nylon and bed sheets and drift through the darkened sky of East Germany, across the border to safety and freedom in West. Germany. Aided by a stiff wind, the balloon took between 20 and 30 minutes to make the 12-mile flight from a field near Lobenstein.
Anchor Motor Freight recalls about 100 employees of the 180 laid off in August when the Warren Space Center terminal was closed.
September 17, 1964: Fall classes begin at Youngstown University with 9,673 students, double the enrollment of the school 10 years earlier. The freshen class of 2,000 is a record.
Sen. Stephen M. Young, D-Ohio, says Sen. Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee for president, "has emerged or been built into the charismatic spiritual leader" of right-wing extremism in America.
September 17, 1954: Mary Elaine Higgins of 926 Wick Ave., a nurse at North Side Hospital who served as an Army nurse in Korea, walks into the recruiting office at Fort Hayes in Columbus to re-enlist, and sees her picture on a recruitment poster. The former lieutenant in the Nurses Corps didn't know she had been pictured on thousands of posters distributed by the Army until she saw one hanging in the office.
Published reports that President Eisenhower has approved a Justice Department decision to block the proposed merger of Bethlehem Steel Corp. and Youngstown Sheet & amp; Tube Co. are promptly denied by A.L. Homer, Bethlehem president.
Campbell City Council votes unanimously to abolish the city's only police sergeant post in a move that came as a surprise to Mayor Michael J. Kovach, who has not decided whether he will sign the bill.
September 17, 1929: A 16-year-old youth who was wounded twice while fleeing from a robbery at a Lyden gasoline station at Walnut and Front streets is arrested when he seeks treatment at St. Elizabeth Hospital. The boy told hospital authorities he had been wounded when a gun accidentally discharged.
Columbiana County opens its 80th annual agricultural fair and the event promises to be the biggest in the county's history.
Bishop James Cannon Jr. of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, is condemned by the Yanceyville, N.C., circuit of the church for trading in stocks. A resolution says the bishop's marginal speculation in the stock market "brings reproach on the cause of Christ, which he was supposed to represent."