Years Ago

Today is Monday, Aug. 3, the 215th day of 2009. There are 150 days left in the year. On this date in 1949, the National Basketball Association is formed as a merger of the Basketball Association of America and the National Basketball League.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus sets sail from Palos, Spain, on a voyage that takes him to the present-day Americas. In 1914, Germany declares war on France at the onset of World War I. In 1943, Gen. George S. Patton slaps a private at an army hospital in Sicily, accusing him of cowardice. (Patton is later ordered by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower to apologize for this and a second, similar episode.) In 1958, the nuclear-powered su In 1980, closing ceremonies are held in Moscow for the Summer Olympic Games, which had been boycotted by dozens of countries, including the United States. In 1981, U.S. air traffic controllers go on strike, despite a warning from President Ronald Reagan they would be fired, which they are. In 1994, Stephen G. Breyer is sworn in as the Supreme Court’s newest justice in a private ceremony at Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist’s Vermont summer home.

August 3, 1984: The 10th anniversary celebration of the Bavarian Fun Fest opens in Sharon.

Atty. Gary Van Brocklin, Republican candidate for Mahoning County prosecutor, volunteers to serve as a special prosecutor to probe alleged irregularities in Youngstown’s Community Development Agency.

August 3, 1969: Fortune magazine does a major piece on the “inside story” of why the conglomerate Ling-Temco-Vought abandoned a plan to take over Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. and instead took control of Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp.

Apple Creek State Hospital for the retarded, which serves the Youngstown district, is described by an officer of the Youth-Ohio Association for Retarded Children as a “zoo or animal farm” that dehumanizes its patients.

August 3, 1959: A red-haired call girl who said she formerly lived in Youngstown is missing in Columbus, where she was scheduled to be a witness before a grand jury probe of Ohio legislative lobbying.

The body of a man who apparently jumped to his death from the south end of the Market Street Bridge is identified as a 40-year-old Oak Street man. Meanwhile, Coitsville Township constable Patrick Paris talked an East Side man out of jumping from an Oak Street Ext. utility line tower.

President Eisenhower’s decision to exchange visits with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev brings praise from Rep. Michael J. Kirwan, D-Youngstown, and condemnation from Sen. Homer Capehart, R.-Ind.

August 3, 1934: The Most Rev. Joseph Schrembs, bishop of Cleveland, adds his voice to those calling on President Roosevelt to include the Beaver-Mahoning waterway in the Public Works Administration.

A boat containing three Youngstown men, Earl McCauley, John Flannery and John Dixon, is missing on Lake Erie after a severe thunderstorm swept across the lake and Northeast Ohio.

A.W. Buckley of the Truscon Steel Co. in Youngstown is one of the passengers who had a narrow escape after their American Airways plane was caught in a 60-mile gale over Pennsylvania while headed from Buffalo to Cleveland. The pilot took to plane from 4,000 feet to 14,000, then descended rapidly through the storm and made an emergency landing at Brookville Airport.