Today in history

Today is Friday, July 17, the 198th day of 2009. There are 167 days left in the year. On this date in 1959, influential jazz vocalist Billie Holiday, known to her fans as “Lady Day,” dies in a New York City hospital at age 44.

In 1821, Spain cedes Florida to the United States. In 1918, Russia’s Czar Nicholas II and his family are executed by the Bolsheviks. In 1936, the Spanish Civil War begins as right-wing army generals launched a coup attempt against the Second Spanish Republic. In 1944, during World War II, 320 men, two-thirds of them African-Americans, are killed when a pair of ammunition ships exploded at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in California. In 1955, Disneyland has its opening day in Anaheim, Calif. In 1968, a coup in Iraq returns the Baath Party to power, five years after it was ousted. In 1975, an Apollo spaceship docks with a Soyuz spacecraft in orbit in the first superpower link-up of its kind. In 1979, Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza resigns and flees into exile in Miami. In 1981, 114 people are killed when a pair of walkways above the lobby of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel collapsed. In 1996, TWA Flight 800, a Paris-bound Boeing 747, explodes and crashes off Long Island, N.Y., shortly after leaving John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 230 people aboard.

July 17, 1984: Sherrod Brown, Ohio secretary of state, says he’s less than sold on a suggestion by Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young that the nation shift to weekend voting.

The Ohio delegation to the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco, which is split between Walter Mondale, Gary Hart and Jesse Jackson, is virtually unanimous in its praise for the Keynote address by New York Gov. Mario Cuomo.

Larry O’Neil and his wife, Joann, will drive the lead car, their 1907 Ford, when members of the Model T Ford Club International begins a 3,000-mile race from New York to Seattle.

July 17, 1969: National Guardsmen arrive in Youngstown to assist city police in cracking down on rioters. Twenty-six arrests have been made, a night-time curfew is in effect and liquor sales are banned. Firemen put out three house fires, but ignored cars that had been overturned and set afire.

Andrew S. Klinko, twice superintendent of Campbell schools and former superintendent of Struthers schools, is named to the Campbell post for a third time, succeeding Nicholas A. D’Amato, who died. He’s given a five year contract with a salary of $21,900 the first year.

The Youngstown Board of Control approves contracts for $454,891 to City Asphalt and Warden Electric for improvements at Youngstown Municipal Airport.

Cpl. Richard F. Runzo, 20, of Westville is reported killed during combat operations in Vietnam, Columbiana County’s 19th casualty of the war.

July 17, 1959: A staff of 22 FBI agents join local police in investigating a daring kidnapping and bank robbery in Niles that netted the lone robber $41,000.

An attempt to put the $10 million sewage plant bond issue on the November ballot by referendum is blocked by a legal technicality, opening the possibility of a court challenge.

A two-week strike by some 320 Youngstown district plumbers ends when Local 87, Plumbers and Steamfitters Union and the Youngstown Plumbing and Heating and Contractors Association agree on a new contract.

July 17, 1934: The Youngstown Chamber of Commerce goes on record as against any effort by Youngstown schools to seek an additional tax levy.

Ben Smith of Boardman is robbed of $67 as he leaves the dog races at Canfield, where he had won $50. He was struck on the head as he went to his car.

A group of Youngstown physicians suggest that city council appropriate $3,000 that would be used to pay doctors 50 cents per shot to immunize indigent children from diphtheria and smallpox.