YEARS AGO

Today is Saturday, Aug. 15, the 227th day of 2015. There are 138 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1057: Macbeth, King of Scots, is killed in battle by Malcolm, the eldest son of King Duncan, whom Macbeth had slain.

1483: The Sistine Chapel is consecrated by Pope Sixtus IV.

1914: The Panama Canal officially opens as the SS Ancon crosses the just-completed waterway between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

1935: Humorist Will Rogers and aviator Wiley Post are killed when their airplane crashes near Point Barrow in the Alaska Territory.

1939: The MGM musical “The Wizard of Oz” opens at the Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood.

1945: Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announces in a recorded radio address that his country has accepted terms of surrender for ending World War II.

1947: India becomes independent after some 200 years of British rule.

1969: The Woodstock Music and Art Fair opens in upstate New York.

1974: A gunman attempts to shoot South Korean President Park Chung-hee during a speech; although Park is unhurt, his wife, Yuk Young-soo, is struck and killed, along with a teenage girl. (The gunman was later executed.)

1995: The Justice Department agrees to pay $3.1 million to white separatist Randy Weaver and his family to settle their claims over the killing of Weaver’s wife and son during a 1992 siege by federal agents at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

2010: Former medical student Philip Markoff, charged with killing Julissa Brisman, a masseuse he’d met through Craigs-list, is found dead in his Boston jail cell, a suicide.

2014: A grand jury indicts Texas Gov. Rick Perry, accusing him of abusing the powers of his office by carrying out a threat to veto funding for state prosecutors investigating public corruption.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: New water-quality standards from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency could saddle the Mahoning Valley with a multimillion-dollar bill to update local sewage plants.

Packard Electric will have to attract and train skilled employees if the General Motors division wants to enjoy another 100 years, GM Chairman Robert Stempel says during a luncheon in Warren.

Two years after she suffered a brutal attack in her Warren home that left her blind, Katherine Melnick, 66, credits the support of friends and family with helping her to cope. Her husband, George, 65, was bludgeoned to death.

1975: Youngstown Schools Superintendent Robert Pegues announces that Science Hill Junior High School on the city’s northeast side will not reopen for classes because of declining enrollment. Students who would have entered the seventh grade will remain at their elementary schools. Eighth- graders will go to North High.

Former Columbiana County Prosecutor Charles A. Pike is named judge of the Columbiana County court, Southeast District.

Quick action by two friends and a lifeguard at North Side Pool saves the life of Carolyn Alexander, 16, of McGuffey Road. She was pulled from the deep end of the pool by Don Melton and Ed Terrel, and lifeguard Norman Rodgers, 17, revived her with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

1965: The $3 million Plaza One project announced by Stephen Baytos and Associates for the site of the former Palace Theater is being postponed until at least 1970. Until then, the theater site will be used as a parking lot.

The Metropolitan Savings and Loan Co. names Frank Fortunato of Canfield, a Youngstown University graduate, to the position of treasurer.

Bert Ingram, former Youngstowner, returns as Scout executive in the Western Reserve District of the Mahoning Valley Council, succeeding Donald White, who accepted a position in Hawaii.

1940: The War Department announces that it will build a $6 million munitions plant on 15,000 acres in Portage and Trumbull counties near Newton Falls.

Three hundred boys and girls from Youngstown parks and playgrounds parade decorated doll carriages and floats in the annual “Youth on Parade” pageant at Idora Park. A crowd of 5,000 attends.

A dynamite bomb badly damages the front of the Sky Club, a roadside tavern at the top of the hill on Warren-Sharon Road just east of the Ohio-Pennsylvania line.