Today is Thursday, Sept. 23, the 267th day of 2004. There are 99 days left in the year. On this date

Today is Thursday, Sept. 23, the 267th day of 2004. There are 99 days left in the year. On this date in 1779, during the Revolutionary War, the American warship "Bon Homme Richard" defeats the HMS Serapis after the American commander, John Paul Jones, is said to have declared: "I have not yet begun to fight!"
In 1642, Harvard College in Cambridge, Mass., holds its first commencement. In 1780, British spy John Andre is captured along with papers revealing Benedict Arnold's plot to surrender West Point to the British. In 1806, the Lewis and Clark expedition returns to St. Louis from the Pacific Northwest. In 1846, the planet Neptune is discovered by German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle. In 1938, a time capsule, to be opened in the year 6939, is buried on the grounds of the World's Fair in New York City. In 1939, Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, dies in London. In 1952, Republican vice-presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon goes on television to deliver what comes to be known as the "Checkers" speech as he refutes allegations of improper campaign financing. In 1957, nine black students who had entered Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas are forced to withdraw because of a white mob outside. In 1962, New York's Philharmonic Hall (since renamed Avery Fisher Hall) formally opens as the first unit of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. In 1973, former Argentine president Juan Peron is returned to power.
September 23, 1979: The construction cost of Liberty Township's recently completed administration building looms as the central issue in the race for the trustees seat between incumbent Phil Adler and one of his three challengers, Louis Poulos.
The New Castle Area Transportation Authority says there appears to be scant interest in bus transportation to the city's suburbs and it appears unlikely that buses will be making runs outside the city anytime soon.
Fringe benefit packages enjoyed by some 200,000 Youngstown district industrial workers are skyrocketing, adding hundreds of millions of dollars to employers' costs. Local executives say they had hoped General Motors would take a stand against more fringes, but the company failed to do so, fearing a long strike if it did.
President Carter tells an interviewer he believes his low standing in public opinion polls will not preclude his re-election in 1980. A recent Associated Press-NBC poll gave Carter a good or excellent rating of only 19 percent.
September 23, 1964: Two North Side Youngstown landmarks are being razed to provide room on Lincoln Avenue for Youngstown University's expansion. Coming under the wrecking ball are the Vaschak Funeral Home, formerly the Fordyce mansion, and the Shriver-Allison North Side Funeral Home.
President Lyndon B. Johnson tells thousands of cheering Steelworkers at the USW convention in Atlantic City that the U.S. economy has passed the 70 million job level.
September 23, 1954: Filthy conditions in the Mahoning County jail, which brought complaints from 47 prisoners, apparently have been partially rectified by Sheriff Paul J. Langley. A city sanitary policemen sent to inspect the jail found the jail, including its kitchen, freshly scrubbed. Mattresses, however, were dirty.
Total voter registration in Mahoning County reaches 130,000 on the final day of registration.
A practical and economical filter for eliminating the nuisance of smoke in steel centers such as Youngstown is being developed, says Leslie Silverman of the Harvard School of Public Health, speaking at a convention of air pollution control officials at the Hotel Pick-Ohio.
September 23, 1929: Frank Babyak of Devitt Avenue, Campbell, murders his wife and then takes his own life, a double tragedy enacted in the presence of the couple's three children. "Neighbors who heard the children screaming "mother is shot" rushed to the house.
The Rev. John Heslip, pastor of Tabernacle U.P. church for 17 years, tenders his resignation. The pastor, who was very conservative in his views and fundamental in his theology, became one of the leaders of the city's temperance and prohibition movements after coming to Youngstown from Rochester, N.Y.
Imperial Potentate Leo Youngworth of Los Angeles arrives in Youngstown to open a convention of 5,000 Shriners at Stambaugh Auditorium.
The Chamber of Commerce special tax committee asks Mahoning County commissioners to reduce the three-tenths of a mill special levy being sought for county operating expenses to two-tenths.