Today is Sunday, Aug. 17, the 230th day of 2008. There are 136 days left in the year. On this date

Today is Sunday, Aug. 17, the 230th day of 2008. There are 136 days left in the year. On this date in 1807, Robert Fulton’s North River Steamboat begins heading up the Hudson River on its successful round-trip between New York and Albany.

In 1896, a prospecting party discovers gold in Canada’s Yukon territory, a finding that touches off the Klondike gold rush. In 1915, a mob in Cobb County, Ga., lynches Jewish businessman Leo Frank, whose death sentence for the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan had been commuted to life imprisonment. (Frank, who’d maintained his innocence, is pardoned by Georgia in 1986.) In 1942, during World War II, U.S. 8th Air Force bombers attack Rouen, France. In 1943, the Allied conquest of Sicily is completed as U.S. and British forces entered Messina. In 1948, former State Department official Alger Hiss faces his chief accuser, Whittaker Chambers, during a closed-door meeting in New York of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and repeats his denial that he’d ever been a Communist agent. In 1969, 256 people are killed as Hurricane Camille slams into the Gulf Coast. In 1978, the first successful trans-Atlantic balloon flight ends as Maxie Anderson, Ben Abruzzo and Larry Newman land their Double Eagle II outside Paris. In 1988, Pakistani President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq and U.S. Ambassador Arnold Raphel are killed in a mysterious plane crash.

August 17, 1983: The Class of ’87 in the Youngstown Public Schools face tougher requirements to graduate, including four years of English and at least two each of math and social studies.

The sheriff’s departments of Columbiana and Carroll counties use a rented helicopter to find and confiscate marijuana that was being grown in the two counties with a street value of $67,000.

The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio approves toll free telephone service between Niles and Warren.

August 17, 1968: A fire of undetermined origin sweeps through the Freak-Out, a McKinley Heights psychedelic hangout for teenagers, causing a loss expected to exceed $65,000.

Three bandits escape with an estimated $1,000 after robbing the manager of the Loblaw Food Market at 1715 S. Raccoon Road while the manager was making a night bank deposit.

Pennsylvania state police raid a hippie colony on the outskirts of Meadville, arresting 38 members of the bearded and beaded band. They were charged with keeping a disorderly house and contributing to the delinquency of the four juveniles living there.

August 17, 1958: Charles M. Nobel, state highway director, outlines the proposed routing of the Lake Erie-to- Ohio River highway during a meeting of highway supporters at the Hotel Pick Ohio.

The Rev. W. Harold Luxon, an Episcopal priest and son of Mr. and Mrs. Harold Luxon of Fairfax Avenue, is visiting his parents in Youngstown. He has been working with impoverished Indians through an Episcopal mission on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

Michael Kuttner, musical director of the Kenley Players, will be guest conductor at a Packard Band Concert at the W. D. Packard Music Hall. Kuttner is an alumnus of Dr. Serge Koussevitsky’s conducting class at Tanglewood and was musical director of the Trenton Opera Association for seven seasons.

August 17, 1933: Youngstown Police Chief Leroy Goodwin and Assistant Law Director Vern Thomas say they are continuing an investigation into misconduct on the police department after two patrolmen are arrested and charged with burglary and robbery.

The Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. starts production on an order for 6,000 tons of 18-inch pipe for delivery to the Northern Gas & Pipe Co. to be used in the company’s Rush County, Kansas, gas fields.

Mark H. Shrank, 41-year-old Akron, Ohio, lawyer, purportedly confessed to poisoning Mr. and Mrs. Alvin Colley and their two children in Hot Springs, Arkansas, to forestall threats of blackmail over some stolen legal papers.