Today in history

Today is Wednesday, July 22, the 203rd day of 2009. There are 162 days left in the year. On this date in 1934, bank robber John Dillinger is shot to death by federal agents outside Chicago’s Biograph Theater, where he had just watched the Clark Gable movie “Manhattan Melodrama.”

In 1587, an English colony fated to vanish under mysterious circumstances is established on Roanoke Island off North Carolina. In 1929, inmates at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N.Y., make an unsuccessful mass escape attempt. In 1933, American aviator Wiley Post completes the first solo flight around the world as he returned to New York’s Floyd Bennett Field after traveling for seven days, 183‚Ñ4 hours. In 1937, the Senate rejects President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s proposal to add more justices to the Supreme Court. In 1942, the Nazis begin transporting Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka concentration camp. In 1943, American forces led by Gen. George S. Patton capture Palermo, Sicily, during World War II. In 1946, Jewish extremists blow up a wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 90 people.

July 22, 1984: Vandals cause more than $130,000 in damage to 17 new vans waiting to be shipped from the B&O yard near the Lordstown General Motors plant.

After 50 years of brick and mortar, the Trumbull Metropolitan Housing Authority is marking its 50th anniversary with no new local housing units on the drawing boards.

Delores E. Jennings of Youngs-town is appointed director of planning at the Community Corp., parent organization of the Youngstown Area United Way.

July 22, 1969: Police and firemen are called back into the South Side, scene of civil disorders, after two Hillman Street business firms, Foy’s BBQ and South Side Billiards, are damaged by Molotov cocktail bombs.

To provide temporary relief for crowded conditions at North High School, the Youngstown Board of Education will bus 236 elementary children to other schools in that area and house only seventh, eighth, and ninth graders in the Science Hill building.

John A. Saunders, president of General Fireproofing Co., announces an increase in the quarterly dividend on common stock from 10 cents to 12 cents.

July 22, 1959: McKay Machine Co. will expand its fabricating and welding division by 40 percent when the division is moved into new and larger quarters on Industrial Road.

The Mahoning County Republican Executive Committee names 16 central committeemen at a two-hour meeting in its campaign to have all 410 precincts of the county represented.

Miss Ohio, Marie Louise DiCarlo of Poland, is eliminated from the Miss U.S.A. finals of the Miss Universe pageant at Long Beach, Calif. Fifteen finalists remain in the competition.

July 22, 1934: Hundreds of Youngstowners are spending part of the summer vacation at Geneva on the Lake in hotels, cabins and tent-towns.

Mrs. William Thomas, 60, of 2456 Stocker Ave., who was totally blind for two years, is able to see and read out of one eye after surgery at South Side Hospital to remove a cataract.

Four armed bandits lock five men in a storage cooler at the Telling-Belle Vernon Co., 400 North Ave., and escape with $532.