Today is Wednesday, July 2, the 184th day of 2008. There are 182 days left in the year. On this date

Today is Wednesday, July 2, the 184th day of 2008. There are 182 days left in the year. On this date in 1776, the Continental Congress passes a resolution saying that “these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.”

In 1807, in the wake of the Chesapeake incident, in which the crew of a British frigate boarded an American ship and forcibly removed four suspected deserters, President Jefferson orders all British ships to vacate U.S. territorial waters. In 1881, President Garfield is shot by Charles J. Guiteau at the Washington railroad station; Garfield dies the following September. (Guiteau was hanged in June 1882.) In 1908, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall is born in Baltimore. In 1926, the United States Army Air Corps is created. In 1937, aviator Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappear over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to make the first round-the-world flight along the equator. In 1961, author Ernest Hemingway shoots himself to death at his home in Ketchum, Idaho.

July 2, 1983: Youngstown area gasoline retailers increase gas prices as much as 12 cents per gallon over a week, reaching a high of $1.22 per gallon.

An attorney for the U.S. Justice Department says “talk is cheap” and suggests Mahoning County Sheriff James A. Traficant Jr. either investigate organized crime in the Mahoning Valley or shut up.

July 2, 1968: Developer Stephen J. Baytos’ failure to develop his 34,000-square-foot parcel on the southeast corner of Wick Avenue and Commerce Street, the old Palace Theater site, results in revocation of an occupancy permit for a temporary parking facility there.

Fire of undetermined origin burns for some time and causes $9,000 damage to the first-floor store rooms of the Glenwood Dairy at 1103-05 Glenwood Ave.

July 2, 1958: Eight horses valued at several thousand dollars die in a fire that destroyed a horse barn at the Canfield Fairgrounds. Valuable racing sulkies and harnesses were also lost.

Dr. Leonard A. Blum of Niles, a physician for 29 years and the holder of a public health degree, will be Youngstown’s first physician health commissioner on a full-time basis. His salary will be $13,500.

July 2, 1933: A 42-hour maximum workweek with a minimum wage of 37 or 38 cents an hour is contained in a code being drawn up by steel industry leaders for submission to Washington.

Joseph Heffernan, former mayor of Youngstown, sponsors a resolution passed by the Ohio Veterans of Foreign Wars meeting in Columbus that calls for conscription of industry during times of war and the abolition of profits by those companies.

The offices of the Mahoning Valley Sanitary District move from the ninth floor of the City Bank Building to the third floor of City Hall.

June ends with a record-breaking registration of 51 passenger cars and two trucks being recorded in Mahoning County in one day. The number of cars sold in June was 395, as against 170 during June 1932.