Years Ago

Today is Saturday, June 28, the 179th day of 2014. There are 186 days left in the year.

Associated Press:

On this date in:

1778: The Revolutionary War Battle of Monmouth takes place in New Jersey; it is from this battle that the legend of “Molly Pitcher” arose.

1836: The fourth president of the United States, James Madison, dies in Montpelier, Va.

1838: Britain’s Queen Victoria is crowned in Westminster Abbey.

1914: Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, are assassinated in Sarajevo by Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip — the event that sparked World War I.

1919: The Treaty of Versailles is signed in France, ending the First World War.

1934: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the National Housing Act, which establishes the Federal Housing Administration.

1939: Pan American Airways begins regular trans-Atlantic air service with a flight that departed New York for Marseilles, France.

1944: The Republican National Convention in Chicago nominates New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey for president and Ohio Gov. John W. Bricker for vice president.

1950: North Korean forces capture Seoul, the capital of South Korea.

1978: The Supreme Court orders the University of California-Davis Medical School to admit Allan Bakke, a white man who argued he’d been a victim of reverse racial discrimination.

1989: About 1 million Serbs gather to mark the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo in 1389.

2004: The U.S.-led coalition transfers sovereignty to the interim Iraqi government two days ahead of schedule.

VINDICATOR FILES

1989: Judges throughout Mahoning County say they support a new house-arrest program that will be monitored by the Community Corrections Association, but they have reservations in varying degrees about its application.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge William T. Bodoh takes daily operation of the Holiday Inn MetroPlex out of the owners’ hands, and at the request of Dollar Savings & Trust Co. will appoint a trustee to oversee the complex.

Lower than expected business volume leads to the closing of The Difference, a men’s clothing store that opened a year earlier in the Phar Mor Centre.

1974: U.S. Sen. Dewey Bartlett, R- Okla., tells those at a $125-a-plate GOP fund-raising dinner at the Avalon Inn that Republicans must effectively point out that Watergate has nothing to do with the 1974 elections and that no Republican seeking office in 1974 had anything to do with the event.

Charles Abernathy, plant manager of the General Motors Assembly Division at Lordstown, presents a $5,000 check to Ralph T. Fabrizio Jr. of Niles for his award-winning suggestion of an engineering change on the Vega seatback.

Mary Acri, 89, of East High Avenue is in guarded condition in St. Elizabeth Hospital after being found beaten and tied in the cellar of her home 16 hours after burglars entered her home.

1964: Three valuable quarter horses die in a fire that destroyed a barn on the Donald Fales farm near the Fowler School in Trumbull County.

Joseph Carlini upsets the incumbent, Irwin Ferencak, for the presidency of Local 1331, United Steelworkers of America, in a close election by employees of Republic Steel Corp.

Luana “Lonnie” Jarvis , a June graduate of Cardinal Mooney High school, finishes third in the week-long National Forensic League dramatic interpretation competition at Akron University.

1939: Members of Austintown’s volunteer fire department take delivery of their first “real” fire engine, a 24-foot model capable of pumping 600 gallons of water a minute. The department had been using old trucks that had water tanks added to them.

The third Serb National Federation Convention opens at the Hotel Ohio main ballroom with about 650 members attending.

The old covered bridge carrying Pricetown Road over the Mahoning River is going to be razed, leaving Mahoning County with only one covered bridge, the Berlin-Ellsworth Road span over Mosquito Creek.