Years Ago

Today is Tuesday, July 30, the 211th day of 2013. There are 154 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1863: American automaker Henry Ford is born in Dearborn Township, Mich.

1864: During the Civil War, Union forces try to take Petersburg, Va., by exploding a gunpowder-filled mine under Confederate defense lines; the attack fails.

1918: Poet Joyce Kilmer, a sergeant in the 165th U.S. Infantry Regiment, is killed during the Second Battle of the Marne in World War I. (Kilmer is perhaps best remembered for his poem “Trees.”)

1945: The Portland class heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis is torpedoed by a Japanese submarine during World War II; only 316 out of some 1,200 men survive.

1953: The Small Business Administration is founded.

1956: President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs a measure making “In God We Trust” the national motto, replacing “E Pluribus Unum” (“Out of many, one”).

1965: President Lyndon B. Johnson signs into law the Medicare bill, which goes into effect in 1966.

1975: Former Teamsters union president Jimmy Hoffa disappears in suburban Detroit; his remains have never been found.

VINDICATOR FILES

1988: Two state agencies will conduct surprise inspections of truckloads of garbage over two months in an attempt to regulate the out-of-state waste that is coming into Ohio, including landfills in Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties.

Two Columbiana county boys, 16 and 17 years old, will be tried as adults in the stabbing death of Willard Kelly, 86, of old State Route 344 in Franklin Square.

1973: Two Liberty Township girls garner first and third honors in the 14th annual Miss Ohio Teen pageant at Sea World in Aurora. Shelley Galip, 17, is crowned Miss Ohio Teen and April Lynn Gatta, 15, is second runner-up.

A gunman armed with a small caliber silver-plated automatic pistol robs a teller at the main office of the Home Savings & Loan on West Federal Street of several thousand dollars.

Citing the additional health hazards of working in coke plants, the USW is seeking a 32-hour week at no reduction in pay of coke plant workers. Republic Steel Corp. and Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. operate coke plants in the Youngstown district.

1963: Anthony D. Sebastian, 25, production manager of WHOT radio, dies of head injuries after his car goes out of control on a rain slicked highway near Elkins and strikes a loaded hay truck.

Three Ellwood City teenagers are killed when their car veers out of control on Cherry Hill Road and plows into a load of lumber. Dead are Ronnie Hogue, 19; Ralph Redmond, 17, and Patty Oliastro, 18.

Thomas Sinko, 14, who would have been a sophomore at East High School, is killed in a two-car crash at state Routes 5 and 87 near Kinsman in Trumbull County.

The Youngstown district’s No. 1 industrial customer, the automobile industry, is shutting down for retooling for the 1964 models.

1938: In an interview on his 75th birthday, Henry Ford says the nation is approaching its most prosperous period, but must first realize that there is no “political Santa Claus or economic magic man in the world.”

Frank Purnell, president of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., tells a Senate Civil Liberties Committee that the company refused to sign a contract with the SWOC before the 1937 Little Steel strike because the company was already paying the wages being demanded and because a contract is impractical in an industry where there are overnight changes in national conditions.

Frank L. of South Avenue Extension is killed almost instantly when he comes in contact with an electrically charged shovel track at the East Fairfield Coal Co.’s strip mine near North Lima.