Today is Monday, Oct. 20, the 294th day of 2008. There are 72 days left in the year. On this date in

Today is Monday, Oct. 20, the 294th day of 2008. There are 72 days left in the year. On this date in 1944, during World War II, Gen. Douglas MacArthur steps ashore at Leyte in the Philippines, 21‚Ñ2 years after he’d said, “I shall return.”

In 1740, Maria Theresa becomes ruler of Austria, Hungary and Bohemia upon the death of her father, Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI. In 1803, the U.S. Senate ratifies the Louisiana Purchase. In 1903, a joint commission rules in favor of the United States in a boundary dispute between the District of Alaska and Canada. In 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee opens hearings into alleged Communist influence and infiltration within the American motion picture industry. In 1964, the 31st president of the United States, Herbert Hoover, dies in New York at age 90. In 1967, seven men are convicted in Meridian, Miss., of violating the civil rights of three slain civil rights workers. In 1968, former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy marries Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. In 1973, in the so-called “Saturday Night Massacre,” special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox is dismissed and Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William B. Ruckelshaus resign. In 1977, three members of the rock group Lynyrd Skynyrd are killed in the crash of a chartered plane near McComb, Miss. In 1981, a bungled armored truck robbery in Nanuet, N.Y., leaves a guard and two police officers dead. (Four suspects, members of radical groups, are later convicted and sentenced to 75 years to life in prison; a fifth suspect, Kathy Boudin, is paroled in 2003.)

October 20, 1983: Choking back tears, Rosalie Grant maintains her innocence and asks the jury that convicted of killing her two sons in an arson fire at her Orrin Avenue home to spare her life.

American Skyship Industries Inc. asks Youngstown City Council for more time to get its financing in order before breaking ground for a dirigible plant at Lansdowne Airport.

October 20, 1968: Austintown dedicates its new $5 million high school with an open house and student-led tours of the new facility.

Youngstown State University announces that its new graduate school has enrolled 374 students in its first quarter. The university has five master’s programs, all geared toward education.

The Youngstown district is deluged over night with the heaviest 24-hour rainfall of the year at 2.37 inches as measured at Youngstown Municipal Airport.

October 20, 1958: Two Struthers buildings, one of them owned by a professional gambler, are damaged by homemade bombs that were detonated almost simultaneously.

Vandals smeared paint on a statue of the Indian Scout that has stood in front of the Butler Institute of American Art for 39 years. Joseph G. Butler, director of the institute, says the paint will be difficult to remove without damaging the cherished weathered look in the process.

October 20, 1933: A jury of six men and six women deliberates for 11 hours before finding former Youngstown Patrolman Thomas Joyce guilty of burglary of the W.H. Lewis Co., an automobile accessory firm, on June 11.

About 650 boys and young men from Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties leave for Fort Knox, Ky., for final examination before being assigned to Civilian Conservation Camps. Among them is newsboy Steve Nemergut, a familiar figure on Phelps Street.