Years Ago

Today is Saturday, Aug. 6, the 218th day of 2011. There are 147 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1806: The Holy Roman Empire goes out of existence as Emperor Francis II abdicates.

1825: Upper Peru becomes the autonomous republic of Bolivia.

1890: Convicted murderer William Kemmler becomes the first person to be executed in the electric chair as he is put to death at Auburn State Prison in New York.

1911: Actress-comedian Lucille Ball is born in Jamestown, N.Y.

1926: Gertrude Ederle becomes the first woman to swim the English Channel, arriving in Kingsdown, England, from France in 141/2 hours.

1945: During World War II, the United States drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, resulting in an estimated 140,000 deaths.

1961: Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov becomes the second man to orbit Earth as he flies aboard Vostok 2, call sign “Eagle” (hence Titov’s repeated exclamation over the radio, “I am Eagle!”).

1965: President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act.

1978: Pope Paul VI dies at Castel Gandolfo at age 80.

1986: William J. Schroeder dies after living 620 days with the Jarvik 7 artificial heart.

1991: The World Wide Web makes its public debut as a means of accessing webpages over the Internet.

VINDICATOR FILES

1986: Voters in Hubbard and Liberty school districts reject operating levies in a special election. Hubbard sought a 9.9-mill issue; Liberty, 6.5 mills.

About 3,000 people attend the 1986 Buckeye Championship Drum and Bugle Corps competition at Bo Rein Memorial Stadium in Niles. Fifteen units from across the United States and Canada compete.

Commercial investment along the Uptown Market Street corridor is in jeopardy because the neighborhoods adjacent to it have been allowed to decay, an evaluation of the area warns.

Evangelist and former football player Bill Glass opens a Crusade for Christ at Mollenkopf Stadium in Warren with 4,000 people attending the first night.

1971: The Urban Renewal Development Review Committee approves two major downtown Youngstown projects, a private 10-story office building and a city-owned four-story parking structure totaling $10 million in construction.

A nine-week strike has delayed construction of the Mahoning Joint Vocational School, but architects hope to have the building under roof by Nov. 1.

Company B, Sixth Engineering Battalion of the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, stationed at 315 E. LaClede Ave., will be removed from Youngstown to South Bend, Ind.

1961: Kent State University will bring its graduate study program to Youngstown, offering post-graduate courses at Boardman High School.

A new group, Friends of the Hubbard Public Library, is being organized to help meet the library’s financial problems.

The Youngstown district’s immediate economic future is taking on a brighter tinge because of the major steel companies’ improved competitive situation and the Berlin crisis, which has stepped up armament efforts.

1936: The Mahoning County Republican organization puts 40 girls to work at the Board of Elections to make a complete tabulation of registered voters in Youngstown, Struthers and Campbell.

Frank Halluck, 42, formerly of Youngstown, on his way home to New York after a visit, dies when a Pittsburgh to New York bus overturns during a driving rainstorm on a mountainside 12 miles west of Huntingon, Pa.

Residents in five precincts in Youngstown’s 5th and 6th wards take out local option petitions that would declare their precincts dry.

Rioting breaks out at an Akron city garage when police try to break through picket lines set up by city employees after 15 street repair workers were laid off.