Years Ago

Today is Friday, Aug. 12, the 224th day of 2011. There are 141 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1867: President Andrew Johnson sparks a move to impeach him as he defies Congress by suspending Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton.

1941: Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, head of the government of Vichy France, calls on his countrymen to give full support to Nazi Germany.

1944: During World War II, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., eldest son of Joseph and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, is killed with his co-pilot when their explosives-laden Navy plane blows up over England.

1953: The Soviet Union conducts a secret test of its first hydrogen bomb.

1960: The first balloon communications satellite — the Echo 1 — is launched by the United States from Cape Canaveral.

1981: IBM introduces its first personal computer, the model 5150, at a press conference in New York. The 5150 that was presented had an Intel 8088 microprocessor running at 4.77 MHz (megahertz), 16 kB (kilobytes) of random-access memory (RAM), no disk drives, and a pricetag of $1,565 (equivalent to nearly $4,000 today).

1985: The world’s worst single-aircraft disaster occurs as a crippled Japan Air Lines Boeing 747 on a domestic flight crashes into a mountain, killing 520 people. (Four people survived.)

VINDICATOR FILES

1986: Columbus Developer Richard Bernstein meets with members of a committee guiding the recycling of the Strouss-Kauffman’s downtown Youngstown store.

Youngstown police are keeping a constant guard on former Mahoning County Common Pleas Judge Forrest Cavalier whose life has been threatened by an escapee from the Ohio Reformatory for Women.

Former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Cliff Stoudt says he’d rather quit football than rejoin the team that he led to the division title in 1983.

1971: The North All Stars in the Ohio All-Star game at Fawcett Stadium in Canton will be coached by Bob Commings, former East High and Struthers football coach. One of Commings’ assistants will be Cliff Knox of Youngstown North High.

The Youngstown Area Development Corp. unveils the first of 18 apartment buildings that will be constructed at McGuffey Road and Cuddy Avenue with a $2 million federal grant.

1961: Henry W. Isaly, 56, president of the Isaly Dairy Co., dies while driving in Pittsburgh, apparently of a heart attack.

Hubbard police are without clues in the slaying of Theodore Shaffer, 52, who was shot to death at his service station-grocery store at 700 W. Liberty St.

A crowd of 25,000 turns out for a parade of the Ohio State Firemen’s Association in Youngstown, with more than 300 fire units from Ohio and Western Pennsylvania.

1936: Two of the largest trucking companies in Youngstown, Motor Express Co. and Commercial Motor Freight Co., are completely shut down by a truck drivers. Some union officials say the railroads are offering assistance to the strikers.

Irving Harvey, 19, of Palmyra drowns in Lake Milton after his homemade motorboat capsizes.

All members of the Mahoning County Board of Elections urge Mahoning County commissioners to place a bond issue on the November ballot to raise the money for the purchase of voting machines.