Years Ago

Today is Wednesday, Aug. 24, the 236th day of 2011. There are 129 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

A.D. 79: Mount Vesuvius erupts, burying the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in volcanic ash; an estimated 20,000 people die.

1572: The St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of French Protestants at the hands of Catholics begins in Paris.

1814: During the War of 1812, British forces invade Washington, D.C., setting fire to the Capitol and the White House, as well as other buildings.

1821: The Treaty of Cordoba is signed, granting independence to Mexico from Spanish rule.

1932: Amelia Earhart embarks on a 19-hour flight from Los Angeles to Newark, N.J., making her the first woman to fly solo, non-stop, from coast to coast.

1949: The North Atlantic Treaty comes into force.

1970: An explosives-lad1981: Mark David Chapman is sentenced in New York to 20 years to life in prison for murdering John Lennon.

VINDICATOR FILES

1986: Ralph Pallante, president of United Steelworkers Local 1462 at the Mahoning Cold Finish Bar Plant at Brier Hill, says LTV Corp. should explain why it will idle his plant despite repeated wage and benefit concessions.

Reacting to Youngstown Mayor Patrick J. Ungaro’s naming of two Republicans to Youngstown Civil Service Commission, Democratic Party Chairman Don L. Hanni Jr. says Ungaro has “sold his soul to the Youngstown establishment and to the Republican Party.”

1971: Army Spec. 4 Kenneth J. David of Girard wins the nation’s second highest award for combat heroism, the Distinguished Service Cross, for bravery during an enemy assault in Vietnam on May 7, 1970.

State consultants turn thumbs down on the hotly debated proposal for a Grand River reservoir.

Donald J. McTigue Jr., a 17-year-old Ursuline senior, is in Laihia, Finland, a foreign exchange student sponsored by the Girard-Liberty Rotary Club.

1961: Three Youngstown public works employees are fired for delivering city-owned slag to the home of an Austintown steelworker, who says he ordered the slag in good faith.

The mounting threat of a strike by auto workers is bringing fear that the district’s steel recovery may be set back seriously, just when an upturn was getting underway.

1936: Walter C. Stitt, president of the Mill Creek Park Commission, business and civic leader, dies in the North Side unit of Youngstown Hospital.

St. Elizabeth Hospital opens its silver jubilee program with ceremonies attended by 500 people at the Nurses’ Home campus.

The Columbiana Board of Education hires Lucille Funkhouser, a graduate of Columbiana High and the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, as music supervisor of Columbiana schools.

Atty. J.C. Argetsinger, general counsel of the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. and a vigorous supporter of the Beaver-Mahoning Waterway project, talks with Gov. Alf M. Landon of Kansas, Republican nominee for president, in New Castle. Argetsinger says Landon is a proponent of canals.