Years Ago

July 17, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Years Ago

Today is Saturday, July 17, the 198th day of 2010. There are 167 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1821: Spain cedes Florida to the United States.

1918: Russia’s Czar Nicholas II and his family are executed by the Bolsheviks.

1936: The Spanish Civil War begins as right-wing army generals launch a coup attempt against the Second Spanish Republic.

1935: The entertainment trade publication Variety runs its legendary headline, “Sticks Nix Hick Pix” (which might be translated as, “Rural audiences reject rural-themed movies”).

1944: During World War II, 320 men, two-thirds of them African-Americans, are killed when a pair of ammunition ships explode at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in California.

1955: Disneyland has its opening day in Anaheim, Calif.

1968: A coup in Iraq returns the Baath Party to power, five years after it was ousted.

1975: An Apollo spaceship docks with a Soyuz spacecraft in orbit in the first superpower link-up of its kind.

1981: One hundred and fourteen people are killed when a pair of walkways above the lobby of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel collapses, one atop the other, during a tea dance.

VINDICATOR FILES

1985: The Sawhill Tubular Division will spend $1 million to reconstruct its Wheatland facilities that were damaged in the May 31 tornado.

Youngstown Police Officer David Bole retires after 34 years on the force, ending a career during which he was wounded in a shoot out and gained a reputation for having a keen eye in spotting stolen cars.

Members of the House Committee on Science and Technology will hold a hearing at Youngstown State University on the steel industry’s use of new technology.

1970: The voting rights of Trumbull County in the Mahoning-Trumbull Council of Governments are suspended after the county announces that it does not intend to pay its 1970 COG assessments.

Dr. Karl W. Dykema, 64, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Youngstown State University and an expert in comparative literature and English linguistics, dies in North Side Hospital.

Former Youngstown Police Chief John B. Thomas retires as a captain from the city police force after serving nearly 40 years.

1960: U.S. Rep. Michael J. Kirwan is praised by Democratic presidential and vice presidential candidates John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson during a breakfast at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles for Kirwan’s work as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Boardman Constable Don Robinson fires two shots at a burglar fleeing through Forest Lawn Memorial Cemetery following a bungled burglary at a Glenwood Avenue home, but the man escapes.

1935: Ray Metzger, former relief director at Campbell, Niles and Ironton, is named to head the Mahoning County relief effort.

Joseph Cefalde, Youngstown’s “Tomato King,” says he has planted 50,000 tomato vines on a 4.5 acre plot off Belle Vista Avenue and expects to harvest 3 million tomatoes. He’s used nearly 30 workers to weed, cultivate and stake the plants.

The Rev. Robert P. McDonald is ordained at South U.P. Church in Youngstown by his father, the Rev. J.A. McDonald, pastor of the church.