Years Ago

Today is Friday, Aug. 5, the 217th day of 2011. There are 148 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1861: President Abraham Lincoln signs the Revenue Act of 1861, which includes the first-ever federal personal income tax, a 3-percent levy on incomes above $800 (however, no income tax ends up actually being collected under this law).

1921: The first broadcast of a baseball game, by KDKA radio announcer Harold Arlin describes the action between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Philadelphia Phillies from Forbes Field. (The Pirates won, 8-5.)

1924: The comic strip “Little Orphan Annie,” by Harold Gray, makes its debut.

1953: Operation Big Switch begins as prisoners taken during the Korean conflict are exchanged at Panmunjom.

1961: The amusement park Six Flags Over Texas has its official grand opening day in Arlington.

1962: Actress Marilyn Monroe, 36, is found dead in her Los Angeles home; her death is ruled a probable suicide from an overdose of sleeping pills.

1981: The federal government begins firing air traffic controllers who had gone out on strike.

VINDICATOR FILES

1986: The designation of the General Motors Corp.’s Lordstown plant as a Federal Foreign Trade Zone will cost the Lordstown schools $458,000 in lost annual tax revenue.

Ohio Senate Minority Leader Harry Meshel, D-33rd, is elected chairman of the National Democratic State Legislative Leaders Association.

Farmers in the Mahoning Valley have barns overflowing with high quality green alfalfa hay and some are shipping the surplus to Georgia, where drought is endangering livestock.

Ohio Gov. Richard Celeste attends the annual picnic of the Croatian Fraternal Union of America and Canada at the Strossmayer picnic grounds in Vienna.

1971: About 3,000 members of the United Steelworkers of America Local 1330 who were laid off in July at the Ohio Works of the U.S. Steel Corp. will receive an immediate $30 more per month under the new steel labor contract.

The beginning of construction on the next leg of the Boardman Expressway is virtually assured with the announcement that federal Department of Transportation has released $8.5 million in funds for the job.

R.J. Wean Jr., president of Wean United Inc., reports that the company had a loss of $1.2 million for the second quarter of 1971

1961: Army Reserve Lt. Michael Machi, 23, of Youngstown is one of 10 citizen-soldiers injured when lightning strikes a cook tent at Camp A.P. Hill, Va. Two reservists, one from Columbus and one from Marysville, were killed.

A spectacular fire destroys an unused barn on Mahoning County Home property a quarter mile off Herbert Road.

Nathan C. Hunt, 62, of Salem, nationally known valve manufacturer, dies of a heart attack in a post office in Boynton Beach, near his Florida home.

Mahoning County Common Pleas Judge Frank J. Battisti will become a U.S. District Court judge for Northern Ohio.

1936: Republic Steel Corp. will build a $3 million cold rolling tin plate mill in Niles, increasing its strip tin plate capacity and employing hundreds of men.

Edward Lee, Civil War veteran who could vividly recall fighting Morgan’s Raiders, dies at the home of his son in Poland at the age of 93.

Since a countrywide quarantine was announced, local dog owners are swarming veterinarians to get their pets vaccinated, with one veterinarian reporting vaccinating 300 dogs in a week.