Years Ago

Today is Sunday, July 29, the 211th day of 2012. There are 155 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1890: Artist Vincent van Gogh, 37, dies of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Auvers-sur-Oise, France.

1914: Transcontinental telephone service begins with a test phone conversation between New York and San Francisco.

1948: Britain’s King George VI opens the Olympic Games in London.

1958: President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating NASA.

1967: An accidental rocket launch aboard the supercarrier USS Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin results in a fire and explosions that kill 134 servicemen.

VINDICATOR FILES

1987: Michael J. Cubbin is named by General Motors as manager of the Buick-Oldsmobile-Cadillac group at Lordstown, succeeding Barry L. Cowger.

A manhunt is on for a gunman who forced his way into McDonald’s restaurant in McKinley Heights before opening hours and shot and killed the manager, Gina M. Smith, 21.

1972: Loblaw’s, a major Youngstown and Pittsburgh area supermarket chain, will close its large warehouse on Meridian Road and transfer its 14 area stores to other chains.

St. Dom’s Apostles score six runs in the bottom of the ninth, tying the game on Phil Myers’ grand slam, and Jim Pecarora homers in the 12th for a 13-12 win over Newman Club in a Steel Valley Slo-Pitch thriller.

1962: Local doctors declare success in the area’s first open heart surgery, performed at St. Elizabeth Hospital on June 11 to close a hole in the heart of 3-year-old Cora Rushton, who is recuperating at home with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Savoy Rushton, and her brothers and sisters.

Dr. Frank “Chips” Bellino, the golfing dentist, is honored as “Golfer of the Year” by the Youngstown District amateur golf Association.

1937: James Constantino, operator of the Press Club, a beer garden, files suit in Mahoning Common Pleas Court seeking payment of $940 he says he is owed by bookies on a winning “bug” number.

Alfred Waters, 85 Broadway, assistant sales manager of the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co. in Youngstown, is soon to marry Mrs. Virginia Lincoln Rogers, who was divorced in Florida from Henry Huddleston Rogers II, heir to a Standard Oil fortune.