Years Ago

Today is Tuesday, Oct. 4, the 277th day of 2011. There are 88 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1777: Gen. George Washington’s troops launch an assault on the British at Germantown, Pa., resulting in heavy American casualties.

1822: The 19th president of the United States, Rutherford B. Hayes, is born in Delaware, Ohio.

1931: The comic strip “Dick Tracy,” created by Chester Gould, makes its debut.

1951: MGM’s musical “An American in Paris,” starring Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron, has its U.S. premiere in New York.

1957: The Space Age begins as the Soviet Union launches Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, into orbit.

1970: Rock singer Janis Joplin, 27, is found dead in her Hollywood hotel room.

1991: Twenty-six nations, including the United States, sign the Madrid Protocol, which imposes a 50-year ban on oil exploration and mining in Antarctica.

2001: Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants hit his 70th home run to tie Mark McGwire’s 1998 record in a 10-2 victory over the Houston Astros. Rickey Henderson homers to pass Ty Cobb and become baseball’s career leader in runs scored with 2,246 during San Diego’s 6-3 win over Los Angeles.

Vindicator files

1986: The Ohio Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities gives the Knabe Group Home at 1632 Fifth Ave. 30 days to meet the state’s rules for operations.

Socrates Kolitsos of Youngstown is elected chairman of the combined board of the newly merged Western Reserve and East Ohio Rivers chapters of the March of Dimes.

1971: The Ohio Supreme Curt dismisses an appeal by deposed Liberty Township trustees against the Trumbull County commissioners in the matter of the separation of the city of Girard from Liberty Township.

A 23-year-old Alliance man is arrested on a charge of armed robbery in the shooting death of a Mount Union College freshman in his dormitory room.

1961: Luther T. Fawcett, whose name is synonymous with sparkling clean water in the Youngstown-Niles area, turns over the reins at Meander Reservoir to Donald D. Heffelinger of Alliance.

A 31-year-old Pittsburgh hoodlum identified by two Niles Bank Co. employees as the man who entered a police cruiser and robbed a bank messenger of $41,000 on July 16, 1959, is being held in Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh.

Frank J. Battisti of Youngstown is sworn in as a federal district judge by Judge Paul Jones, also a Youngstown native in Cleveland . It is Battisti’s 39th birthday.

1936: The old Block Glass Mantle Co. plant at 1737 Logan Ave., a Crab Creek area landmark for 40 years, is destroyed in one of the most spectacular fires in Youngstown history.

The Ohio Public Service Co. wins an injunction in federal court against a $93,000 Public Works Administration grant for construction of a new municipal power plant in Newton Falls.

Matthew Patsark, 44, of Campbell is fatally scalded when he falls into a pit of hot water at the Struthers Iron & Steel Co, Struthers.