Today is Wednesday, Aug. 6, the 219th day of 2008. There are 147 days left in the year. On this date

Today is Wednesday, Aug. 6, the 219th day of 2008. There are 147 days left in the year. On this date in 1945, during World War II, the United States drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, resulting in an estimated 140,000 deaths in the first use of a nuclear weapon in warfare.

In 1806, the Holy Roman Empire goes out of existence as Emperor Francis II abdicates. In 1825, Upper Peru becomes the autonomous republic of Bolivia. In 1890, convicted murderer William Kemmler becomes the first person to be executed in the electric chair as he is put to death at Auburn State Prison in New York. In 1926, Gertrude Ederle of New York becomes the first woman to swim the English Channel, arriving in Kingsdown, England, from France in 141‚Ñ2 hours.

August 6, 1983: A Detroit company, American Sun Roof, will open a plant near the Lordstown General Motors complex to convert Cavaliers coupes off the Lordstown line into convertibles.

Thirty-five Lutheran congregations, including 14 in the Youngstown area and 14 in Austin, Texas, will participate in a pilot project to determine the suitability of using new video technology in local churches.

August 6, 1968: Attorney Edward Roberts, counsel for the Youngstown Education Association, tells more than 300 teachers at a meeting at the Voyager Motor Inn that politicians and labor organizations are trying to control education in the city’s public schools.

Mahoning County commissioners are studying an offer by the G.M. McKelvey Co. for rented space in the Parkade as a central office for all county welfare agencies.

Youngstown police identify the badly decomposed body of a murdered woman found in a vacant house at 353 Meadow St. as that of Marietta Cook, 37, of Youngstown. She had been shot twice in the heart.

August 6, 1958: The office of Ohio Secretary of State Ted W. Brown and county election boards begin the task of checking the validity of nearly 464,000 signatures calling for an Ohio vote on a constitutional amendment to ban union shops. About 17,500 signatures were collected on petitions in Mahoning County.

If Ohio Attorney General William Saxbe declines to take legal action to remove Youngstown Municipal Judge Frank R. Franko from the bench, the state bar association will turn to Mahoning County Prosecutor Thomas A. Beil to pursue Franko’s removal.

August 6, 1933: The Mahoning County Board of Elections asks Sheriff William Englehardt to assign his two cruiser cars with four deputy sheriffs to Campbell on primary election day to maintain order as Campbell holds a particularly hot primary election. There is a three-cornered race on the Republican ticket.

Alberta Fleming, 28, a farm wife near Jefferson in Ashtabula County, says her 55-year-old husband forced her to kill her two infant sons within a period of a year and a half.