Today is Saturday, Aug. 9, the 222nd day of 2008. There are 144 days left in the year. On this date

Today is Saturday, Aug. 9, the 222nd day of 2008. There are 144 days left in the year. On this date in 1945, three days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, the United States explodes a nuclear device over Nagasaki, killing an estimated 74,000 people.

In 1848, the Free-Soil Party convenes in Buffalo, N.Y., where it nominates Martin Van Buren for president. In 1854, Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden,” which described his experiences while living near Walden Pond in Massachusetts, is first published. In 1936, Jesse Owens wins his fourth gold medal at the Berlin Olympics as the United States takes first place in the 400-meter relay. In 1969, actress Sharon Tate and four other people are found brutally murdered in Tate’s Los Angeles home; cult leader Charles Manson and a group of his followers are later convicted of the crime. In 1974, President Nixon’s resignation takes effect. Vice President Gerald R. Ford becomes the nation’s 38th chief executive. In 1995, Jerry Garcia, lead singer of the Grateful Dead, dies in San Francisco of a heart attack at age 53.

August 9, 1983: Mayor Rocco Mico says the city of Campbell appears headed for bankruptcy, a victim of the decline in the general economy and the fall of the Youngstown Sheet Tube Co.

Austintown Township trustees, calling plans for a Meanderwood area condominium community “highly speculative and vague,” unanimously reject zoning commission approval of the project. Lockwood Enterprises asked that 96 acres in west Austintown be rezoned from residential single-family and agricultural to residential multi-family.

August 9, 1968: The Youngstown Police Department and the Human Relations Commission sponsor “Recruitment Sunday” at Youngstown churches to encourage young Negroes and Puerto Ricans to apply for police examinations.

August 9, 1958: Montgomery Ward & Co. Inc., big national mail order and retail store firm, is surveying the Youngstown area with a view of locating a large department store in the area.

The Mahoning Valley Distributing Co. warns Girard Mayor Joseph Catone that if the city insists on banning from newsstands magazines that are granted mailing permits by the U.S. Post Office, the city will be taken to federal court.

August 9, 1933: T. Roy Gordon, former mayor of Campbell, wins the Republican nomination for mayor in a hotly contested three-way race.

Some 30,000 people attend the 34th annual picnic at Idora Park sponsored by the Youngstown Grocers and Meat Dealers Association.