Years Ago

Today is Saturday, Aug. 23, the 235th day of 2014. There are 130 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date:

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.”

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 to back 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.”

1989: In a case that inflames racial tensions in New York, Yusuf Hawkins, a 16-year-old black youth, is shot dead after he and his friends were confronted by a group of white youths in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn.

2009: Reality TV contestant Ryan Jenkins, suspected of killing his wife, former model Jasmine Fiore, is found hanging in a motel in Hope, British Columbia, Canada, an apparent suicide.

2013: A military jury convicts Maj. Nidal Hasan in the deadly 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, that claimed 13 lives; the Army psychiatrist was later sentenced to death.

VINDICATOR FILES

1989: Struthers Fire Chief Harold Milligan says his department’s investigation into the sale of fireworks in the city in June is closed and will not be reopened to investigate whether Councilman Robert D. Carcelli was involved.

For the third time in a decade, the Republican Party concedes the office of mayor of Youngstown, failing to field a candidate in the fall election to challenge Mayor Patrick Ungaro, a Democrat.

Richard D. Rees, vice president and Boardman office manager of First Federal Savings Bank, is elected president of the Youngstown chapter of the Institute for Financial Education.

1974: Police are holding an adult and two Hubbard juveniles in the kidnapping of a 23-year-old Hubbard woman and her 3-year-old child that began on Myron Street and ended after a police chase, when the van they were in crashed in Girard.

The Columbus Evening Dispatch receives a warning from the U.S. Postal Service about publishing state lottery numbers or advertisements that go through the mail. The paper pulled the results from its mail deliveries, but left them in the non-mail copies.

A 950-pound steer raised by Jim Drake is sold at auction at the Columbiana County Fair for a record price of $1.80 per pound.

1964: Mayor Anthony B. Flask receives a letter from Dr. Howard Jones, president of Youngstown University, offering assurances that university personnel could conduct promotional examinations for the police department. City Council rejected a proposal to pay Western Reserve University $1,200 to do the testing.

Jack Thompson of Southern Hills Country Club will defend his Youngstown Open championship against 144 entrants at Mill Creek Course.

1939: Youngstown’s huge new airport in Vienna will be ready for airliners Jan. 1 if eastern Ohio enjoys another long fall construction season, says City Engineer Albert R. Haenny.

Pilot Wayne Hoopes, 20, is killed and a 16-year-old passenger, Robert E. LeFevre, is seriously injured when their airplane crashes at Russ Miller’s airport near North Benton.

L. Frank Smith, president of Franklin Furniture Co. in Columbiana, returns home from a trip and announces he is willing to negotiate with representatives of employees to end a strike that has shut down the shop and thrown 110 people out of work for a week.