YEARS AGO

Today is Thursday, Oct. 15, the 288th day of 2009. There are 77 days left in the year. On this date in 1969, peace demonstrators stage activities across the country, including a candlelight march around the White House, as part of a “moratorium” against the Vietnam War.

In 1858, the seventh and final debate between senatorial candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas takes place in Alton, Ill. In 1860, 11-year-old Grace Bedell of Westfield, N.Y., writes a letter to presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln, suggesting he could improve his appearance by letting his whiskers grow. In 1914, the Clayton Antitrust Act is signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson. In 1917, Dutch dancer Mata Hari, convicted of spying for the Germans, is executed by a French firing squad outside Paris. In 1928, the German dirigible Graf Zeppelin lands in Lakehurst, N.J., completing its first commercial flight across the Atlantic. In 1945, the former premier of Vichy France, Pierre Laval, is executed for treason. In 1946, Nazi war criminal Hermann Goering fatally poisons himself hours before he was to have been executed. In 1976, in the first debate of its kind between vice-presidential nominees, Democrat Walter F. Mondale and Republican Bob Dole face off in Houston. In 2003, 11 people are killed when a Staten Island ferry slams into a maintenance pier. (The ferry’s pilot, who’d blacked out at the controls, later pleads guilty to 11 counts of manslaughter and is sentenced to 18 months in prison.)

October 15, 1984: The Youngs-town State University Penguins football team’s chartered DC-9 lands hard in the fog in Erie, Pa., and skitters off the runway, coming to an abrupt stop in the mud. The team was returning after a 16-13 victory over Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tenn., and had to land in Erie because Cleveland and Youngstown were fogged in.

The 7th District Court of Appeals rules against Ronald Testa of Warren in his three-year battle to keep Wally the lion at his Adelaide Avenue home. Neighbors say they haven’t seen any sign of Wally for months.

Nick Macris, Howland Schools superintendent, says inequities in distribution of income tax funds to schools is responsible for Howland’s fiscal woes.

October 15, 1969: The new Lowellville branch library is nearing completion and will open in two weeks. The $127,000 structure is a vast improvement over library facilities that had been located in city hall.

A $750,000 lawsuit is filed in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court against Dr. Sam Sheppard and Youngstown Osteopathic Hospital charging malpractice on behalf of James Evans, 11, who was operated on for a broken arm by Sheppard, who practiced briefly in Youngstown after his conviction for murdering his wife was overturned.

October 15, 1959: Carl C. Rigby, general manager of the Packard Electric Division of General Motors, is elected to the board of trustees of Youngstown University.

Contracts will be awarded in December for Boardman’s new $1.9 million junior high school building.

Youngstown Mayor Frank X. Kryzan urges City Council to increase the city’s income tax from 9 mills to an even 1 percent to provide funds for a 5 percent pay increase for city employees.

October 15, 1934: Clarence J. Brown, Republican candidate for governor of Ohio, says he is “unalterably opposed to spending public money” for support of private or parochial schools.

Between 60 and 75 students march out of East High to protest the loss of a football game to Rayen and to demand the ousting of Coach Harley Littler. Supt. George E. Roudebush says the protesters represent only a handful of the school’s 2,100 students and will come to realize they are acting foolishly.

J.E. Jones, former Youngstown finance director, now administrative officer of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration in Washington, says recovery must come to the American farmer before general prosperity can return.