Today is Thursday, Oct. 30, the 304th day of 2008. There are 62 days left in the year. On this date

October 30, 2008 at 12:00a.m.

Today is Thursday, Oct. 30, the 304th day of 2008. There are 62 days left in the year. On this date in 1938, the radio play “The War of the Worlds,” starring Orson Welles, airs on CBS. (The live drama, which employs fake breaking news reports, panics some listeners who think the portrayal of a Martian invasion is real.)

In 1735, the second president of the United States, John Adams, is born in Braintree, Mass. In 1885, poet Ezra Pound is born in Hailey, Idaho. In 1944, the Martha Graham ballet “Appalachian Spring,” with music by Aaron Copland, premieres at the Library of Congress in Washington, with Graham in a leading role. In 1945, the U.S. government announces the end of shoe rationing, effective at midnight. In 1961, the Soviet Union tests a hydrogen bomb, the “Tsar Bomba,” with a force estimated at about 50 megatons.

October 30, 1983: William B. Pearch, a Mahoning County deputy, says Sheriff James A. Traficant Jr. gave him $10,000 in cash before the 1982 election, telling him it would be used as evidence against two reputed organized crime figures.

The U.S. invasion of Grenada could foreshadow a more aggressive “big stick” policy by the Reagan administration in Latin America, says Dr. George Beelen, chairman of the YSU history department.

Ellen G. Satre is elected president of the Help Hotline Board of Directors, succeeding Dr. James Morrison.

October 30, 1968: Youngstown Police Chief John Terlesky tells 150 people at a community meeting at Friendship Baptist Church that police have been keeping a close eye on Hillman Street bars after citizen complaints but they have found no evidence of underage youths frequenting the bars.

Rose Mary Woods, a Sebring native who has been Richard Nixon’s private secretary for 13 years, says her boss has made no commitments to anyone should he become president. She says even she hasn’t yet been asked to come along to the White House.

October 30, 1958: Mahoning County deputies and Boardman police say an object that fell from the sky was still warm when they picked it up Market Street Ext. Prof. Eugene Scudder of the Youngstown University chemistry department is analyzing the object.

The Greater Youngstown Community Chest final report meets 93 percent of the goal, but at $1.1 million sets a record.

Youngstown City Council approves the sale of $1.2 million in redevelopment bonds to finance slum clearance on a 44-acre site on W. Federal Street.

October 30, 1933: Dr. F. H. Sodt, noted Lutheran leader, tells 2,500 people at the seventh annual Lutheran Reformation Festival at Stambaugh Auditorium that “we will not recover from our present economic unrest until we find the love of God and Christian teachings despite the national recovery act and other means of recovery.”

Safe crackers open the safe at the Quality Lunch, 17 Wick Ave., scoop up $1,200 in cash and a diamond ring and flee.