Sunday, August 20, 2006
Sunday, August 20, 2006 Today is Sunday, Aug. 20, the 232nd day of 2006. There are 133 days left in the year. On this date in 1968, the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact nations begin invading Czechoslovakia to crush the "Prague Spring" liberalization drive of Alexander Dubcek's regime. In 1833, Benjamin Harrison, 23rd president of the United States, is born in North Bend, Ohio. In 1866, President Andrew Johnson formally declares the Civil War over, months after fighting had stopped. In 1914, German forces occupy Brussels, Belgium, during World War I. In 1920, pioneering American radio station 8MK in Detroit (later WWJ) begins daily broadcasting. In 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill pays tribute to the Royal Air Force, saying, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." In 1953, the Soviet Union publicly acknowledges it has tested a hydrogen bomb. In 1955, hundreds of people are killed in anti-French rioting in Morocco and Algeria. In 1964, President Johnson signs a nearly $1 billion anti-poverty measure. In 1977, the U.S. launches Voyager 2, an unmanned spacecraft carrying a 12-inch copper phonograph record containing greetings in dozens of languages, samples of music and sounds of nature. In 1986, postal employee Patrick Henry Sherrill goes on a deadly rampage at a post office in Edmond, Okla., shooting 14 fellow workers to death before killing himself. August 20, 1981: A $3 million convention center with a seating capacity of 3,500, 96 motel rooms and a mini-mall is proposed at Calla Road and Market Street by developer Ralph Lepley, owner of the nearby Sorrentino's restaurant. Opponents of Mahoning County's piggyback sales tax miss a deadline for placing a referendum vote on the November ballot, meaning the half-cent tax will be in effect until at least January 1983. The Youngstown Area Community Action Council will close its five satellite centers and layoff 57 employees because of cutbacks in federal spending. Dial-a-Ride, YACAC's transportation program, is another victim of cutbacks. August 20, 1966: Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. will start work soon on construction of smoke control facilities at its Campbell Works in a $10 million project that will take five years to complete. Mary Alice Grimmett, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Frank Grimmett, leaves for Bloomington, Ind., to represent Youngstown in the Miss Junior Achievement national competition. "The American University has lost its sense of time and its sense of direction," Dr. Perry E. Gresham, president of Bethany College in Bethany, W. Va., tells 397 graduates at Youngstown University's summer commencement. The Federal Housing Administration says the Youngstown area will have a demand for 2,100 new residential housing units in the two-year period ending Dec. 1, 1967. August 20, 1956: Bishop Lloyd C. Wicke of the Pittsburgh Area of the Erie Conference of the Methodist Church, consecrates the new First Methodist Church of Greenville. The $341,000 building on Clinton Street replaces the old sanctuary, which was destroyed by fire in 1948. Mahoning County commissioners vote to have the sanitary engineer make a survey and recommend a means of stopping the flow of raw sewage into Mill Creek Park's streams and lakes. Advertisement: Back to school sale at Strouss Hirshberg's in downtown Youngstown: Royal portable typewrite, $117.50; Mickey Mouse pencil box, $1; 24 personalized pencils with the student's full name in gold lettering, $1; sturdy nylon bookbags, $3.29. August 20, 1931: Youngstown City Council takes preliminary steps to provide $75,000 through a bond issue that would provide work in city parks and playgrounds for the unemployed. Gertrude Klivans returns to Youngstown after a year in Soviet Russia teaching English to Soviet engineers and mining professionals. She found the Russians hard-working and hospitable. Their code of morals is liberal; two people living together constitutes a marriage and either can walk away from the relationship with a simple declaration. The Union Savings & Trust Co., Warren's oldest bank, is closed by the state department of banking after the bank's cash reserves were depleted through heavy withdrawals. Five oil companies with assets of more than $1 billion are close to agreeing on a merger. The companies are Sinclair Consolidated Oil Corp., Tidewater Associated Oil Co., Prairie Oil and Gas. Co., Prairie Pipe Line Co. and Rio Grande Oil Co. Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.