Years Ago

Today is Saturday, Aug. 24, the 236th day of 2013. There are 129 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

A.D. 410: Rome is overrun by the Visigoths, a major event in the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

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.

1912: Congress passes a measure creating the Alaska Territory.

Congress approves legislation establishing Parcel Post delivery by the U.S. Post Office Department, slated to begin on Jan. 1, 1913.

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

1949: The North Atlantic Treaty comes into force.

1959: Three days after Hawaiian statehood, Hiram L. Fong is sworn in as the first Chinese-American U.S. senator while Daniel K. Inouye is sworn in as the first Japanese-American U.S. representative.

1968: France becomes the world’s fifth thermonuclear power as it explodes a hydrogen bomb in the South Pacific.

1970: An explosives-laden van left by anti-war extremists blows up outside the University of Wisconsin’s Sterling Hall in Madison, killing 33-year-old researcher Robert Fassnacht.

VINDICATOR FILES

1988: Washington Post Columnist George F. Will tells 350 upscale Second National Bank customers during an appearance at the Packard Music Hall that the early campaign focus on vice presidential candidate Dan Quayle’s conduct as a young, privileged man will fade as real issues emerge in the presidential campaign.

Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine, the main grandstand attraction scheduled for Sept. 4 at the Canfield Fair, pulls out of its contract. The cancellation comes two weeks after Estefan played under muddy conditions at the Delaware State Fair, leading her to fire her manager.

North Star Steel Co. says it has closed the first sale of seamless tubing it has been producing at its Youngstown plant — 10,000 feet of well casing to a major oil corporation to be used off the coast of Texas.

1973: Millie Dunbar, manager of the Sohio service station at Chestnut and Market streets in Warren, is advertising for an “all-girl staff” and has received 20 applications.

The executive committee of the Youngstown Education Association votes to strike the city schools Sept. 4 unless a contract is reached.

At the Kenley Players in Warren, Lucie Arnaz, Dean Dittman and Rudy Vallee in “Once Upon a Mattress.”

1963: Sales of Youngstown area stores in the four weeks ended Aug. 17 chalked up the largest increase from those of a year earlier – 13 percent — of any district in the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

Prompted by a news story of buried fortunes in Troy, Ohio, an Alliance minister, the Rev. Owen Glassburn, and his wife search their Salem property and find $655 in gold coins.

1938: The Youngstown Board of Control awards a contract for the purchase of 570 nickel automatic type parking meters to the Dual Parking Meter Co. of Oklahoma City at $56.50 per meter.

A large crowd is expected to welcome a party of about 30 to 40 fliers in 15 to 18 airplanes touring Ohio on a three-day good will air tour at Bernard Airport.

Two young canoeists set out on a boyhood desire to canoe down the Mahoning River and as much of the Ohio River as they can cover in a week. Larry Suter, 22, of Youngstown and Harry Barr, 25, of Urbana leave Hillsville, Pa., in Suter’s 18-foot canoe.