Today is Sunday, Sept. 7, the 251st day of 2008. There are 115 days left in the year. On this date

Today is Sunday, Sept. 7, the 251st day of 2008. There are 115 days left in the year. On this date in 1907, the British liner RMS Lusitania set out from Liverpool, England, on its maiden voyage, arriving six days later in New York. (Lusitania was sunk by a German submarine in 1915.)

In 1825, the Marquis de Lafayette, the French hero of the American Revolution, bades farewell to President John Quincy Adams at the White House. In 1908, pioneering heart surgeon Dr. Michael DeBakey is born in Lake Charles, La. In 1927, American television pioneer Philo T. Farnsworth, 21, succeeds in transmitting the image of a line through purely electronic means with a device called an “image dissector.” In 1940, Nazi Germany begins its initial blitz on London during World War II. In 1968, feminists protesting outside the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, N.J., toss articles including cosmetics, girdles and bras into a trash can ostensibly for burning, although nothing was actually set on fire. (The winner of the pageant was Miss Illinois Judith Ford.) In 1978, Bulgarian defector Georgi Markov, living in London, is stabbed in the leg by a man carrying an umbrella; Markov died four days later, an apparent victim of the Bulgarian secret police. In 1998, St. Louis Cardinal Mark McGwire equaled Roger Maris’ single-season home run record as he hit number 61 during a game against the Chicago Cubs. In 2003, in a speech to the nation on Iraq, President Bush said he was asking Congress for $87 billion to fight terrorism, and cautioned Americans that the struggle would “take time and require sacrifice.”

September 7, 1983: The Ohio Fire Marshal’s Office tells area firefighters that nuclear waste shipments pose fewer hazards to public safety than do tankers loaded with gasoline or chlorine.

Serious crimes decline 18.3 percent in Youngstown during the first six months of the year, statistics released by Police Chief John E. Lynch III show, even though 25 policemen were laid off in January.

September 7, 1968: A $530,000 lawsuit claiming wrongful death is filed in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court against Dr. Sam Sheppard and the Youngstown Osteopathic Hospital by the estate of Samuel Lopez, who died of a hemorrhage after spinal surgery.

Youngstown State University receives an $18,660 grant from the U.S. Army Research Office for support of a research project by Dr. Leon Rand, professor of chemistry and chairman of the department of chemistry.

The Supreme Court is considering a suit brought by 113 Cleveland, Ohio, reservists trying to block the government from sending them to Vietnam. They contend the president cannot order them to Vietnam because there has been no declaration of war or national emergency by the Congress.

September 7, 1958: Dr. William D. Loeser is named director of medical education of the Youngstown Hospital Association and will be in charge of the educational program of the hospital’s 65 interns and residents.

Television station WKST-TV, operating on Channel 45 from a transmitter at E. Midlothian Blvd., asks the Federal Communications Commission for permission to shift to Channel 33 and change its headquarters from New Castle, Pa., to Youngstown.

The new St. Dominic School at Cottage Grove and E. Auburndale Avenues is dedicated by the Very Rev. W.D. Marrin, O.P., of New York, provincial of St. Joseph Province.

The Youngstown Police Department is giving public demonstrations of its new speedometer that times the speed of a vehicle as it passes over two rubber tubes placed 44 feet apart. Police have been issuing warning tickets during the demonstrations, but within a week, the citations will be for real.

September 7, 1933: Corrine Porter, 19, of Youngstown, Miss Ohio, arrives in Atlantic City for the Miss America pageant.

The Rev. Sigismund Laky, minster of the Mahoning Avenue Hungarian Church, is notified that he was appointed associate editor of the American Hungarian Reformed Church paper, a weekly publication.