Years Ago

Today is Thursday, Aug. 20, the 232nd day of 2009. There are 133 days left in the year. On this date in 1968, the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact nations begin invading Czechoslovakia to crush the “Prague Spring” liberalization drive led by Alexander Dubcek.

In 1833, Benjamin Harrison, 23rd president of the United States, is born in North Bend, Ohio. In 1866, President Andrew Johnson formally declares the Civil War over, months after fighting had stopped.In 1914, German forces occupy Brussels, Belgium, during World War I. In 1920, pioneering American radio station 8MK in Detroit (later WWJ) begins daily broadcasting. In 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill pays tribute to the Royal Air Force, saying, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” In 1955, hundreds of people are killed in anti-French rioting in Morocco and Algeria. In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Economic Opportunity Act, a nearly $1 billion anti-poverty measure. In 1977, the U.S. launches Voyager 2, an unmanned spacecraft carrying a 12-inch copper phonograph record containing greetings in dozens of languages, samples of music and sounds of nature. In 1979, Diana Nyad succeeds in her third attempt at swimming from the Bahamas to Florida. In 1989, entertainment executive Jose Menendez and his wife, Kitty, are shot to death in their Beverly Hills, Calif., mansion by their sons, Lyle and Erik.

August 20, 1984: U.S. Rep. Lyle Williams of Lordstown, R-17th, attending the Republican National Convention in Dallas, says the 1984 Republican Party should address the primary importance of protecting jobs.

A survey by Media General-Associated Press shows that 44 percent of Americans have guns in their home and one in 10 carries a weapon to protect themselves against crime.

Trumbull County Common Pleas Judge Mitchell F. Shaker removes Niles Municipal Judge Charles B. Zubyk from gambling trials of two Niles men and assigns the cases to Girard Municipal Judge Anthony Bernard. The men, charged with running a gambling house at the E. Park Avenue Social Club, alleged Zubyk is prejudiced toward conviction.

August 20, 1969: William E. Howze, 20, of Youngstown is sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted of first-degree murder in the death of a service station attendant during a robbery in February.

Ohio Gov. James A. Rhodes hints that he will be a candidate for the U.S. Senate.

Mahoning County and six of its subdivisions file notices of appeal with the Ohio Supreme Court seeking restoration of cuts of hundreds of thousands of dollars in state support.

August 20, 1959: The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co. is suing the Amalgamated Meatcutters and Butchers Union for $100,000 in damages plus $50,000 a day for picketing its operations in the Youngstown district.

U.S. Army Engineers will conduct a $30,000 survey of Crab Creek in Youngstown to determine the feasibility of a flood control project.

Youngstown gambler Vincent J. DeNiro approaches the end of serving a 30-day sentence in the Mahoning County Jail for contempt of court, a sentence he fought for nearly two years through four courts.

August 20, 1934: Atty. Ralph A. Beard, former Mahoning County Common Pleas judge and prosecutor, is killed when his car is demolished by a fast-moving training at a crossing on the Lincoln Highway near Van Wert. His wife is hospitalized.

Two hundred delegates at a district meeting of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers in Niles declare that company unions are just as unAmerican as Communism.