Years Ago

Today is Monday, Aug. 17, the 229th day of 2009. There are 136 days left in the year. On this date in 1969, Hurricane Camille slams into the Mississippi coast as a Category 5 storm with top sustained winds estimated at nearly 200 mph. The hurricane and resulting flash floods are blamed for 256 U.S. deaths, three in Cuba.

In 1807, Robert Fulton’s North River Steamboat begins heading up the Hudson River on its successful round-trip between New York and Albany. In 1915, a mob in Cobb County, Ga., lynchs Jewish businessman Leo Frank, whose death sentence for the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan had been commuted to life imprisonment. (Frank, who’d maintained his innocence, is pardoned by the state of Georgia in 1986.) In 1942, during World War II, U.S. 8th Air Force bombers attack Rouen, France. In 1943, the Allied conquest of Sicily is completed as U.S. and British forces entered Messina. In 1987, Rudolf Hess, the last member of Adolf Hitler’s inner circle, dies at Spandau Prison at age 93, an apparent suicide. In 1988, Pakistani President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq and U.S. Ambassador Arnold Raphel are killed in a mysterious plane crash.

August 17, 1984: Youngstown police shoot and wound a 30-year-old Wirt Street man while investigating the robbery of a man at Park Avenue and Griffith Street. Police said they shot him when he reached for a gun he had dropped earlier on police instructions.

Two local fathers-rights activists are arrested in Brookfield when, police said, they attempted to harass the ex-wife of one of them.

LTV Corp.’s tubular products division is making a detailed study of its Poland Avenue pipe-making facilities and similar operations in Aliquippa, Pa., to determine which will be retained.

August 17, 1969: Leah DeSantis, 16, of Hubbard exchanges her Miss Youngstown Teenager crown for that of Miss Ohio Teenager in state competition in Sandusky. Runners-up were Patty Hoover of Canfield, Gail Hovanic of Youngstown and Jeanie Yourchisin of Brookfield.

Twenty-five women from low-income areas in Youngstown are undergoing eight weeks of training over the summer and will get jobs as teachers aides when the new school year opens.

August 17, 1959: The A&P Youngstown District warehouse on Hubbard Road is closed as a strike by meat cutters in the company spreads.

Weary crews are working to clean up the tangled wreckage of 24 freight cars loaded with expensive merchandise that derailed on the Baltimore & Ohio’s important line near Newton Falls.

About 200 members of Local 102 of the United Rubber Workers at the Republic Rubber Division of Lee Tire Corp. In Youngstown vote to approve a new contract that will increase pensions, supplemental unemployment benefits and improved working conditions.

August 17, 1934: Ohio Highway Director Whitey Merrell represents the state at ceremonies dedicating the Pymatuning Dam, Pennsylvania’s largest inland water body.

The Youngstown Chamber of Commerce is being reorganized into five divisions, each of which will be a paid undersecretary who reports directly to H.R. Packard, the new executive secretary.

Youngstown area legislators say they support a state drivers license and responsibility law, which advocates say could save 800 lives and millions of dollars in property damage a year.