Years Ago

Years Ago

Today is Friday, Sept. 19, the 262nd day of 2014. There are 103 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1777: The first Battle of Saratoga is fought during the Revolutionary War; although British forces succeed in driving out the American troops, the Americans prevail in a second battle the following month.

1796: President George Washington’s farewell address is published.

1881: The 20th president of the United States, James A. Garfield, dies 21/2 months after being shot by Charles Guiteau; Chester Alan Arthur becomes president.

1934: Bruno Hauptmann is arrested in New York and charged with the kidnap-murder of Charles A. Lindbergh Jr.

1945: Nazi radio propagandist William Joyce, known as “Lord Haw-Haw,” is convicted of treason and sentenced to death by a British court.

1957: The United States conducts its first contained underground nuclear test, code-named “Rainier,” in the Nevada desert.

1959: Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, visiting Los Angeles, reacts angrily upon being told that, for security reasons, he wouldn’t get to visit Disneyland.

1960: Cuban leader Fidel Castro, in New York to visit the United Nations, angrily checks out of the Shelburne Hotel in a dispute with the management; Castro ends up staying at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem.

1964: The family TV show “Flipper,” about a dolphin adopted by a Florida family, premieres on NBC.

1970: The situation comedy “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” debuts on CBS-TV.

1985: The Mexico City area is struck by a devastating earthquake that kills at least 9,500 people.

1989: A Paris-bound DC-10 belonging to French airline UTA is destroyed by a bomb over Niger, killing all 170 people on board. (A French court later convicted six Libyans in absentia for the bombing; Libya agreed in 2004 to pay $170 million in compensation, although it stopped short of acknowledging responsibility.)

1994: The medical drama “ER” premieres on NBC-TV.

2004: Hu Jintao becomes the undisputed leader of China with the departure of former President Jiang Zemin from his top military post.

Militants decapitate three hostages believed to be Iraqi Kurds in a videotape that surfaces hours after Iraq’s prime minister said that January elections would be held on schedule.

The United States suffered its biggest Ryder Cup loss in 77 years as it loses to the Europeans, 181/2 to 91/2.

2009: Russia says it will scrap a plan to deploy missiles near Poland after Washington dumps a planned missile shield in Eastern Europe.

Art Ferrante, 88, half of the piano duo Ferrante and Teicher, dies in Longboat Key, Fla. (Lou Teicher had died in 2008 at age 83.)

2013: Signaling a dramatic shift in Vatican tone, Pope Francis says in a published interview that the Roman Catholic church has become obsessed by “small-minded rules” about how to be faithful and that pastors should instead emphasize compassion over condemnation when discussing divisive social issues such as abortion, gays and contraception.

A Texas appeals court tosses the criminal conviction of former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, saying there is insufficient evidence for a jury in 2010 to have found him guilty of illegally funneling money to Republican candidates.

Hiroshi Yamauchi, 85, who ran Nintendo for more than 50 years, died in central Japan.

VINDICATOR FILES

1989: For the second time in two years, Youngstown State University and its unions enter 11th hour negotiations, with contract talks stymied over the issue of health care just two days before classes are to begin.

Mathews School District parents, angry that busing has been eliminated for high school students, unsuccessfully ask the Trumbull County Board of Education to intercede on their behalf.

Youngstown police arrest a Sharon man who has admitted involvement in the theft of 200 automobiles from Youngstown and its suburbs.

1974: Ohio Edison Co. is granted a rate increase by Youngstown City Council amounting to about 15.5 percent for all residential and commercial customers.

Work begins to correct both design and construction errors in the new Bliss Fine Art and Music Building at Youngstown State University, where building trades workers walked off the job weeks earlier, claiming the structure unsafe because of cracks in the concrete.

A large amount of narcotics is taken from a drug locker at the Gray’s Drug Store in the Southern Park Mall by burglars who pried open the store’s outside entrance.

1964: The Youngstown University Penguins have an impressive opening game, beating Gustavus Adolphus, 25-7.

A driver for Cooper-Jarrett Inc. is killed when his tractor trailer rig smashes into the home of Homer Schaeffer at Routes 165 and 46, knocking the six-room house off its foundation.

Heavy demand causes the Youngstown Playhouse to add three performances of the musical “Riverwind” to its schedule.

1939: Trumbull County Common Pleas Judge Lyn B. Griffith rejects a taxpayer suit seeking an injunction against construction of a $1 million housing project for low-income residents on Niles Road in Warren.

The board of the Youngstown Federation of Women’s Clubs sends a telegram to Ohio Sens. Vic Donahey and Robert A. Taft and Congressman Michael Kirwan urging them “to do all in your power to prevent the catastrophe of our country’s entrance into war.”

Charles M. Schwab, first president of U.S. Steel Corp. and founder of Bethlehem Steel Co., who died in New York at 77, is remembered by the many steel men who knew him in Youngstown as jovial, jocular and a great optimist.