Today is Tuesday, June 30, the 181st day of 2009. There are 184 days left in the year. On this date

Today is Tuesday, June 30, the 181st day of 2009. There are 184 days left in the year. On this date in 1859, French acrobat Charles Blondin (born Jean Francois Gravelet) walks back and forth on a tightrope above the gorge of Niagara Falls as thousands of spectators watch.

In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt signs the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. In 1908, the Tunguska Event takes place in Russia as an asteroid explodes above Siberia, leaving 800 square miles of scorched or blown-down trees. In 1921, President Warren G. Harding nominates former President William Howard Taft to be chief justice of the United States, succeeding the late Edward Douglass White. In 1934, Adolf Hitler carries out his “blood purge” of political and military rivals in Germany in what comes to be known as “The Night of the Long Knives.” In 1936, the novel “Gone with the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell is published in New York. In 1958, the U.S. Senate passes the Alaska statehood bill by a vote of 64-20. In 1963, Pope Paul VI is crowned the 262nd head of the Roman Catholic Church. In 1971, a Soviet space mission ends in tragedy when three cosmonauts aboard Soyuz 11 are found dead inside their spacecraft after it had returned to Earth.

June 30, 1984: Ben Eliseo Jr., one of three Youngstown men held in Saudi Arabia since April, arrives at Youngstown Municipal Airport on a flight from New York in a private plane provided by U.S. Rep. Lyle William, who promised the family Eliseo would be home by his daughter’s birthday. Also released from Saudi Arabia were George Kunce and Edward Pease, all employees of Bucheit International.

Sgt. Charles Xenakis, president of the Campbell Fraternal Order of Police lodge, says Campbell is “flooded with narcotic” and is the “laughing stock” of Mahoning County in the enforcement of narcotics laws.

The National Organization for Women opens a campaign urging Walter F. Mondale to pick a woman as the Democratic vice presidential candidate.

June 30, 1969: The Youngstown Auto Club announces plans to construct a modern new two-story building on E. Front Street between Champion and Walnut streets at a cost of $240,000.

Youngstown police say they will be using new radar units that have already caught 100 speeders in an effort to control traffic over the Fourth of July holiday.

Dr. John Hillabrand, a Toledo obstetrician, tells a meeting of the Mahoning Valley Right to Life conference that abortion “is not a religious question but a question of whether the unborn life is human or not.”

June 30, 1959: A 19-year-old Warren man is bound over to the Mahoning County grand jury on a charge of shooting a 17-year-old friend in the back during a rumble at a dance in Coitsville Township.

Mayor Frank X. Kryzan warns top brass in the city police department against laxity in law enforcement in the remaining months of the administration and threatened disciplinary action against those who notoriously associate with known hoodlums or attempt shakedowns.

Quick action by three teenage boys prevent the drowning of 8-year-old Claudia Melton in South Side pool. John Kaminski and John Phelps, both 14, first went to the girl’s aid; they were quickly joined by lifeguard Richard Schuley, 17, in pulling the girl from the water and administering artificial respiration.

June 30, 1934: Youngstown police arrest three people for failing to keep 3.2 beer under lock and key after midnight.

Youngstown Mayor Mark Moore, whose policemen in Youngstown are conducting a campaign against speeding, is arrested in Brockton, N.Y., on a charge of speeding while on a vacation trip.

George Osborne, secretary-treasurer of the Hern Paper Co., is elected chairman of the Youngstown Metropolitan Area Citizens Association at a closed meeting at the YMCA.