Years Ago

Today is Friday, July 25, the 206th day of 2014. There are 159 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1814: The Battle of Lundy’s Lane, one of the bloodiest battles of the War of 1812, takes place in present-day Niagara Falls, Ontario, with no clear victor.

1909: French aviator Louis Bleriot becomes the first person to fly an airplane across the English Channel, traveling from Calais, France, to Dover, Great Britain, in 37 minutes.

1934: Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss is assassinated by pro-Nazi Austrians in a failed coup attempt.

1943: Benito Mussolini is dismissed as premier of Italy by King Victor Emmanuel III, and placed under arrest. (However, Mussolini was later rescued by the Nazis, and re-asserted his authority.)

1944: Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters record Cole Porter’s “Don’t Fence Me In” in Los Angeles for Decca Records.

1952: Puerto Rico becomes a self-governing commonwealth of the United States.

1956: The Italian liner Andrea Doria collides with the Swedish passenger ship Stockholm off the New England coast late at night and begins sinking; at least 51 people are killed.

1960: A Woolworth’s store in Greensboro, N.C., that had been the scene of a sit-in protest against its whites-only lunch counter, drops its segregation policy.

1978: Louise Joy Brown, the first “test tube baby,” is born in Oldham, England; she was conceived through the technique of in-vitro fertilization.

1984: Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the first woman to walk in space as she carries out more than three hours of experiments outside the orbiting space station Salyut 7.

1994: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Jordan’s King Hussein sign a declaration at the White House ending their countries’ 46-year-old formal state of war.

2000: A New York-bound Air France Concorde crashes outside Paris shortly after takeoff, killing all 109 people on board and four people on the ground; it is the first-ever crash of the supersonic.

2004: Israelis form a human chain stretching 55 miles from Gaza to Jerusalem to protest Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Gaza Strip withdrawal plan.

2009: President Barack Obama continues his full-court press to pass health care reform legislation, citing a new White House study indicating that small businesses are paying far more per employee for health insurance than big companies, a disparity the president said is “unsustainable” as well as “unacceptable.”

VINDICATOR FILES

1989: Four pickets are arrested during a demonstration at the ground breaking for a new Peter Schmitt Co. distribution center. About 45 Teamsters from a Schmitt facility in Sharon that will be closed set up a picket line.

About a dozen parents wearing signs that read “Save Our Kids” picket at the Warren Board of Education offices to protest a citywide redistricting plan.

Youngstown area Arby’s restaurants will underwrite an annual full scholarship at Youngstown State University to mark the company’s 25th anniversary.

1974: Three striking NFL players — Dan Dierdorf of the St. Louis Cardinals, Allen Page of the Minnesota Vikings and Ed Podolak of the Kansas City Chiefs — join striking autoworkers on the picket line at the GM plant in Lordstown. Two busloads of autoworkers plan to picket the Hall of Fame game in Canton.

Youngstown Area Urban League volunteers are canvassing parts of Youngstown’s South Side, encouraging citizens to register to vote and to attend the league’s weekly education workshops.

Vindicator sports writer Chuck Perazich writes about events at the All-Star Classic in Pittsburgh, including a report on Youngstowner George “Shotgun” Shuba’s hours spent talking shop at the Hilton Hotel with broadcaster Joe Garagiola and players Tony Kubek, Bob Feller, Stan Musial, Dick Williams, Harry Walker and Joe Pignitano.

1964: Sharon Steel Corp. earns $624,000 on sales of $36.7 million in the second quarter, bringing first half earnings to $971,000 or 70 cents a share on sales of $71 million.

William R. Jewell, 41, of Hubbard dies after being sprayed with hydrofluoric acid in an accident on the pickling line at the Sharon Steel Corp. Roemer Works.

Delores Simmons, 22, is pronounced dead at St. Elizabeth Hospital, where she was left in a car after being stabbed at her High Street home. Police arrested the 23-year-old owner of the car.

1939: Salem police are questioning George Ludwig, 57, in connection with the hatchet slaying of Andrew Drotleff, 69, in Drotleff’s Granite Street home in which Ludwig was a roomer.

About 100 people go to Mill Creek Park to see Mars, which is as close to the Earth as it will be for the next 15 years, through a telescope set up by amateur astronomers Leo Grandmontagne and T.G. Beede.

Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. will construct a new continuous gas butt-weld mill at its Campbell plant.