Years Ago

Today is Tuesday, July 29, the 210th day of 2014. There are 155 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1030: The patron saint of Norway, King Olaf II, is killed in battle.

1588: The English attack the Spanish Armada in the Battle of Gravelines, resulting in an English victory.

1890: Artist Vincent van Gogh, 37, dies of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Auvers-sur-Oise, France.

1900: Italian King Humbert I is assassinated by an anarchist; he is succeeded by his son, Victor Emmanuel III.

1914: Transcontinental telephone service in the U.S. becomes operational with the first test conversation between New York and San Francisco.

Massachusetts’ Cape Cod Canal, offering a short-cut across the base of the peninsula, is officially opened to shipping traffic.

1921: Adolf Hitler becomes the leader (“fuehrer”) of the National Socialist German Workers Party.

1948: Britain’s King George VI opens the Olympics Games in London.

1957: The International Atomic Energy Agency is established.

Jack Paar makes his debut as host of NBC’s “Tonight Show.”

1958: President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating NASA.

1974: Singer Cass Elliot dies in a London hotel room at age 32.

1981: Britain’s Prince Charles marries Lady Diana Spencer at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. (However, the couple divorce in 1996.)

1994: Abortion opponent Paul Hill shoots and kills Dr. John Bayard Britton and Britton’s bodyguard, James H. Barrett, outside the Ladies Center clinic in Pensacola, Fla. (Hill is executed in September 2003.)

VINDICATOR FILES

1989: Some local members of the Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks say they support a vote at the Elks national convention to bar women from membership because they believe men and women should have their own clubs.

The U.S. House rejects an amendment proposed by U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. to cut 100 Internal Revenue Service jobs from an appropriation bill by a vote of 398-12.

Renee Maro, 7-year-old daughter of Rick and Peggy Maro of Struthers, earns top honors in her age group in a statewide tornado safety poster contest that had more than 80,000 entrants.

1974: Nineteen people are injured in a 12- vehicle pile-up on the fog-shrouded Geneva Marsh Bridge on I-79 near Meadville, Pa.

An amusement ride collapses at a festival in Wellsville, injuring 19 people, three of them seriously.

Two Sebring brothers are killed and two others, including a third brother, are injured when their car is struck broadside by two railroad engines at the Heacock Road crossing in Smith Township. Orda Graham Jr., 16, and Howard, 9, are pronounced dead at Alliance City Hospital.

1964: A gasoline price war that has smoldered for more than a year bursts into flames with prices ranging from 23.9 to 31.9 cents per gallon.

Warren police are holding a Walnut Street man in the bludgeoning death of the Rev. John H. Wright, pastor of Trinity Baptist Church, whose body was found in a lot on Hazelwood Avenue SE.

Eight head of cattle are killed by lightning on the Lordstown farms of James Cassidy and Malcolm Kibler during a violent thunderstorm.

1939: Speaking at the dedication of Lowellville’s new $60,000, WPA-built city hall, Ohio Attorney General Thomas Herbert calls for decentralizing government away from the state and federal governments to local towns and townships.

The Struthers Iron & Steel Co.’s “Anna” furnace at Struthers will go into blast, bringing the recall of about 300 workers.

Velma West, Ohio’s “blonde hammer murderess” and Mary Ellen Richards, who escaped from the Ohio Reformatory for Women at Marysville, are being returned from Texas, where they were captured without incident. The warden says their heads will be shaved and they will face a month in solitary confinement.