Years Ago

Today is Friday, Aug. 23, the 235th day of 2013. There are 130 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1305: Scottish rebel leader Sir William Wallace is executed by the English for treason.

1775: Britain’s King George III proclaims the American colonies to be in a state of “open and avowed rebellion.”

1858: “Ten Nights in a Bar-room,” a play by Timothy Shay Arthur about the perils of drinking alcohol, opens in New York.

1913: Copenhagen’s Little Mermaid statue, inspired by the Hans Christian Andersen story, is unveiled in the harbor of the Danish capital.

1914: Japan declares war against Germany in World War I.

1926: Silent film star Rudolph Valentino dies in New York at age 31.

1927: Amid protests, Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are executed in Boston for the murders of two men during a 1920 robbery.

1939: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agree to a non-aggression treaty, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in Moscow.

1944: Romanian Prime Minister Ion Antonescu is dismissed by King Michael, paving the way for Romania to abandon the Axis in favor of the Allies.

1960: Broadway librettist Oscar Hammerstein II, 65, dies in Doylestown, Pa.

1973: A bank robbery-turned-hostage-taking begins in Stockholm, Sweden; the four hostages end up empathizing with their captors, a psychological condition now referred to as “Stockholm Syndrome.”

1982: Lebanon’s parliament elects Christian militia leader Bashir Gemayel president; however, Gemayel is assassinated three weeks later.

VINDICATOR FILES

1988: With Ohio a battleground in the presidential campaign, operatives for the George Bush and Michael Dukakis campaigns are targeting the Buckeye State’s “Reagan Democrats.”

A witness says a riotous crowd egged on a 16-year-old Cleveland boy to run over Daniel R. Gilmore of Warren after he had been beaten and left unconscious on an East Side Cleveland street.

Commercial Intertech Corp. reports record sales of $107.6 million in the second quarter and profits of more than $5 million.

1973: For the first time in more than 40 years, one of the Goodyear airships will land at Youngstown Municipal Airport. The Mayflower, which is headed for New York City, will spend the night at the airport.

Richard Rudebock and Ann Fitzsimons are crowned 4-H king and queen at the Columbiana County Fair.

Schwebel Baking Co. of Youngstown is testing an electrically powered delivery van in a field study with Ohio Edison Co.

1963: Several delegations from Youngstown will be among the thousands expected in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 28 to participate in the march for civil rights on the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Andrew deVoursnehy, a United Airlines executive, proposes a huge new Eastern Ohio Regional Airport connected with Youngstown, Akron, Cleveland and Canton through a system of high-speed highways.

Local 1418, United Steelworkers of America, representing some 3,200 employees of the Campbell Works of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., is building a new union hall at Warhurst Road and Roosevelt Drive.

1938: William James, 38, a bank examiner, is seriously wounded when he was caught in a gunbattle between a youthful bandit and druggist C.V. Dobson in Dobson’s drug store at Midlothian and Southern boulevards.

Lokey Allen, 24, of Pittsburgh is arrested by Farrell police after running naked through the city for two blocks. Allen told police he was surprised by his wife and the husband of a lady he had been visiting and dashed from the house to avoid an argument.

The Ohio Open Golf Tournament gets underway at the Youngstown Country Club.