Years Ago

Today is Saturday, Aug. 15, the 227th day of 2009. There are 138 days left in the year. On this date in 1945, Japanese Emperor Hirohito announces to his subjects in a prerecorded radio address that Japan has accepted terms of surrender for ending World War II.

In 1057, Macbeth, King of Scots, is killed in battle by Malcolm, the eldest son of King Duncan, whom Macbeth had slain. In 1859, Chicago White Sox founder Charles Comiskey is born in Chicago. In 1914, the Panama Canal opens to traffic. In 1935, humorist Will Rogers and aviator Wiley Post are killed when their airplane crashes near Point Barrow in the Alaska Territory. In 1944, during World War II, Allied forces land in southern France in Operation Dragoon. In 1947, India becomes independent after some 200 years of British rule. In 1969, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair opens in upstate New York. In 1971, President Richard Nixon announces a 90-day freeze on wages, prices and rents. In 1979, Andrew Young resigns as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations after coming under fire for an unauthorized meeting with the U.N. observer for the Palestine Liberation Organization. In 1998, 29 people are killed by a car bomb that tears apart the center of Omagh, Northern Ireland; a splinter group calling itself the Real IRA claims responsibility.

August 15, 1984: The Mahoning Valley Economic Development Corp. agrees to pay $150,000 for the Youngs-town & Akron Railroad spur serving Youngstown Steel Door and Ply Trim Corp. in Austintown.

The Mahoning Avenue Bridge, closed for four months, could be closed the rest of the year as it becomes apparent that more extensive repairs are needed than had been anticipated.

The Mothers Against Drunken Driving and Mahoning County Coroner Dr. Nathan Belinky combine to get financing for 10 billboards in the county that will discourage drinking and driving.

August 15, 1969: A two-alarm fire, fed by varnish and solvents, races through the Mahoning Paint Corp., injuring one fireman and one employee.

Catholic schools in the Youngstown Diocese will get $2 million this school year as the result of an omnibus education law passed by the General Assembly that will provide $50 for every parochial school district. The Youngstown dioceses has 41,909 pupils.

Youngstown State University gets the deed for the site of a new $5 million physical education building from the city’s urban renewal department.

August 15, 1959: Mayor Frank X. Kryzan announces a 10-point downtown parking plan that would double the number of metered parking spaces, increase parking fines and a impose a rush-hour parking ban.

Dr. Elmer E. Kirkwood, director of the Mahoning Tuberculosis Sanatorium from 1925 to 1946, dies in North Side Hospital. He was 65.

Surprise picketing by Pennsylvania meat cutters and butchers closes 30 Youngstown District A&P food stores and could spread to 140 stores.

August 15, 1934: A record breaking Democratic primary vote is cast in Mahoning County’s primary election, while the Republican turnout was down, bringing Democratic officials to predict that they will wrest control of county offices from the GOP in November.

Locke Miller, Trumbull County poet, defeats John S. Ruth, paint contractor and former Republican, in the race for the Democratic nomination for Congress, to oppose Congressman John G. Cooper.

Joseph Wilkoff of the Wilkoff Co. is elected a member of the national board of directors of the Institute of Scrap Iron and Steel