YEARS AGO

Today is Thursday, August 6, the 218th day of 2015. There are 147 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1813: during the Venezuelan War of Independence, forces led by Simon Bolivar recaptured Caracas.

1825: Upper Peru becomes the autonomous republic of Bolivia.

1862: The Confederate ironclad CSS Arkansas is scuttled by its crew on the Mississippi River near Baton Rouge, La., to prevent capture by the Union.

1914: Austria-Hungary declares war against Russia, and Serbia declares war against Germany.

1926: Gertrude Ederle becomes the first woman to swim the English Channel, arriving in Kingsdown, England, from France in 141/2 hours.

1945: During World War II, the United States drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, resulting in an estimated 140,000 deaths. (Three days later, the United States explodes a nuclear device over Nagasaki; five days after that, Imperial Japan announces its surrender.)

1930: New York State Supreme Court Justice Joseph Force Crater went missing after leaving a Manhattan restaurant; his disappearance remains a mystery.

1956: The DuMont television network goes off the air after a decade of operations.

1961: Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov becomes the second man to orbit Earth as he flies aboard Vostok 2.

1965: President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act.

1978: Pope Paul VI dies at Castel Gandolfo at age 80.

1986: William J. Schroeder dies at at Humana Hospital-Audubon in Louisville, Ky., after living 620 days with the Jarvik 7 artificial heart.

1993: Louis Freeh wins Senate confirmation to be FBI director.

2005: Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, whose soldier-son, Casey, was killed in Iraq, begins a weeks-long protest outside President George W. Bush’s Texas ranch.

2010: In a stunning announcement, Hewlett-Packard Co. says it has ousted CEO Mark Hurd after an investigation of a sexual harassment complaint found that he had falsified expense reports and other documents to conceal a relationship with a contractor.

2014: President Barack Obama closed a three-day U.S.-Africa summit in Washington which brought together leaders from more than 50 African nations. Michael Worthington was put to death by the state of Missouri for raping and killing college student Melinda “Mindy” Griffin in 1995, making him the first U.S. prisoner executed since a lethal injection in Arizona the previous month in which an inmate took nearly two hours to die.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: Strained by increases in its mail-order business, Bike Nashbar of Boardman is working on an expansion project that could include construction of a new 100,000-square-foot building.

More than 300 Campbell residents are called into City Hall to explain why they haven’t filed city income tax forms in years.

A high-level Bush administration study calls for spending $500 million a year to reduce the U.S. infant-mortality rate, which is now worse than 19 other countries, including Singapore and East Germany.

1975: Thirty-four Girl Scouts from Canfield Troops 445 and 177 get a bonus on their trip to Washington, D.C., meeting President Gerald Ford during a visit to Arlington National Cemetery, where Ford was signing documents restoring citizenship to Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

Domestic car sales are running at a 14-year low, while imports of fuel-stingy Japanese cars are steadily increasing. Toyota and Datsun knocked the traditional import leader, Volkswagen, from the top spot in June.

Equipment and supplies valued at $370,000 go on sale at a bankruptcy auction of Albee Homes Inc. in Niles and its various subsidiaries. The Albee factory at 931 Summit Street was once the hub of the company’s modular home empire.

1965:An application to transfer a liquor permit from the Elms Ballroom, which will be razed, to the Lincoln Apartments on Phelps Stree across from Youngstown University is filed with the Ohio Department of Liquor Control by L.A. Cavalier Jr., who owns both properties.

The Struthers Park Board and Musicians Union Local 86 plan free pop concerts in Yellow Creek Park with Paul Elias, elementary schools music director, directing the concerts.

Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wagner of Columbiana and their son, Doug, 8, leave for North Africa, where the couple will teach American children of a U.S. oil company in Tripoli.

1940: Mayor William B. Spagnola says he will meet with the city law director and engineer to discuss a contract at the municipal airport that will provide the M. DeBartolo Co. with a profit of $16,000 to $20,000 for earth removal. the company will rent its heavy equipment, but the city is required to provide the fuel and motor oil and the WPA will provide the operators and maintenance men. When a reporter asked Edward J. DeBartolo about the contract, he was told it was none of his business.

A woman found wandering in western Mahoning County suffering from amnesia is identified as Ethel Yoter, 17, of Pittsburgh’s South Side. A Vindicator reporter traced a high school ring the girl was wearing to her sister who attended Stowe Township High School near Pittsburgh.

Reacting to a drop in enrollment, the Campbell Board of Education votes to close the Gordon Avenue School and transfer its 375 pupils to the Reed and Penhale schools