Today in history

Today is Friday, July 24, the 205th day of 2009. There are 160 days left in the year. On this date in 1959, during a visit to Moscow, Vice President Richard Nixon engages in his famous “Kitchen Debate” with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. (The impromptu exchanges occur in the kitchen of a model home at the American National Exhibition, with each man arguing for his country’s technological advances.)

In 1847, Mormon leader Brigham Young and his followers arrive in the Great Salt Lake Valley in present-day Utah. In 1858, Republican senatorial candidate Abraham Lincoln formally challenges Democrat Stephen A. Douglas to a series of political debates; the result is seven face-to-face encounters. In 1862, the eighth president of the United States, Martin Van Buren, dies in Kinderhook, N.Y. In 1866, Tennessee becomes the first state to be readmitted to the Union after the Civil War. In 1929, President Herbert Hoover proclaims the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which renounces war as an instrument of foreign policy. In 1937, the state of Alabama drops charges against four of the nine young black men accused of raping two white women in the “Scottsboro Case.”

July 24, 1984: Two local businessmen tell Warren City Council that the city could earn $32,000 in royalties over 10 years if it allows gas well drilling on city property off North Tod Avenue.

More than $16.3 million in low-interest mortgage will be available for first-time home buyers in Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties as part of a $335 million program through the Ohio Housing finance Agency.

Playing at Frank Kenley’s Theater of the Stars in Warren, Dick Van Patten in “Passengers.”

July 24, 1969: A spectacular two-alarm fire fed by plush furnishings sweeps through Cicero’s restaurant at 2609 Market Street causing $75,000 damage and injuring two firemen. The original owner of the restaurant, Vincent DeNiro, died nearby in 1961 when his car was destroyed by a dynamite explosion.

A 37-year-old South Side man described as a major heroin dealer for the South Side and Westlake Crossing areas and a 28-year-old East Side woman who allegedly acted as his lieutenant are arrested by Youngstown police.

A jailbreak attempt is foiled in the Mahoning County Jail’s maximum security fourth floor cell range housing 10 prisoners.

July 24, 1959: The Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. announces record high earnings of $28.7 million, equal to $8.27 a share for the first six months of the year.

Mahoning County Judge Edgar J. Diehm promises heavy fines and jail sentences for would-be drivers who hire stand-ins to pass their state drivers license examinations. The most recent of 12 people to appear before Diehm are fined $100 and given suspended 10-day jail sentences after being arrested by Ohio Highway Patrolman Keith Schellenger.

July 24, 1934: Albert Hasusky, 10, dies in the South Side unit of Youngstown Hospital after his clothing was ignited by a bonfire at Hunter and Campbell streets.

Sharon Steel Hoop Co. makes a net profit of $436,671, or $1.23 a share, for the first six months of the year.

Burglars saw through iron bars at the rear of the Ohio State Liquor Store on N. Watt Street, escaping with at least 15 cases of imported whiskey.