YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

Today is Friday, Aug. 21, the 233th day of 2015. There are 132 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1831: Nat Turner leads a violent slave rebellion in Virginia resulting in the deaths of at least 55 white people. (He later was executed.)

1858: The first of seven debates between Illinois senatorial contenders Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas take place.

1911: Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” is stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris. (The painting was recovered two years later in Italy.)

1940: Exiled Communist revolutionary Leon Trotsky dies in a Mexican hospital from wounds inflicted by an assassin the day before.

1944: The United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and China open talks at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington that help pave the way for establishment of the United Nations. (The talks concluded Oct. 7.)

1945: President Harry S. Truman ends the Lend-Lease program that had shipped some $50 billion in aid supplies to America’s allies during World War II.

1959: President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs an executive order making Hawaii the 50th state.

1963: Martial law is declared in South Vietnam as police and army troops begin a violent crackdown on Buddhist anti-government demonstrators.

1983: The musical play “La Cage Aux Folles” opens on Broadway.

1991: The hard-line coup against Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev collapses in the face of a popular uprising led by Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin.

1993: In a serious setback for NASA, engineers lose contact with the Mars Observer spacecraft as it was about to reach the red planet on a $980 million mission.

1995: ABC News settles a $10 billion libel suit by apologizing to Philip Morris for reporting the tobacco giant had manipulated the amount of nicotine in its cigarettes.

2005: Pope Benedict XVI triumphantly ends his four-day trip to his native Germany, celebrating an open-air Mass for a million people in Cologne.

2010: Iranian and Russian engineers begin loading fuel into Iran’s first nuclear power plant.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: There is a growing consensus among Youngstown officials that a 0.25 percent increase in the city’s 2 percent income tax is the only way to finance expansion of the police department. Mayor Patrick Ungaro wants to hire 25 new patrolmen.

Mill Creek Metropolitan Park officials have used park employees and money to campaign against a petition drive seeking to dissolve the park district.

The Sharon City School District is going to make it tougher for chronic truants to earn a high-school diploma. A student with 15 or more class absences in a semester would be ineligible to earn credit for that semester.

1975: R.J. Wean, president of Wean United Inc., announces that the company has received an order for a $70 million steel mill to be built in Venezuela.

Mahoning Common Pleas Judge Forrest J. Cavalier rules that a Youngstown City Council ordinance requiring flashing lights on WRTA buses that transport school students is invalid, and he permanently enjoins the city from enforcing the law.

The contract of Robert L. Pegues, superintendent of Youngstown city schools, is extended through 1980 by the board, over the objections of one board member, Louis Marciella. Pegues will receive a $1,000 increase in his $32,000 annual salary each year.

1965: Frank C. Watson, president of the Youngstown Area Chamber of Commerce, urges 372 graduates of Youngstown University to help make Youngstown and the university prosper in years ahead.

The Kindel Construction Co. agrees to a new deadline of Oct. 4 to complete installation of a large sewer line to the General Motors complex in Lordstown.

Atty. Robert B. Nevin, counsel for the Legal Aid Society and a Youngstown Municipal Court judge for 19 years, dies in North Side Hospital after a long illness.

1940: Mrs. Jens Rong of Youngstown and her three children are reported aboard the U.S. Army transport American Legion, which passed through mine-infested waters of Scotland and is en route to New York. Youngstown relatives had last heard that the family was in Norway.

A crowd of 12,000 shivering fans show up at Idora Park for the police department boxing matches. Overnight temperatures reached 48 degrees.

When Bernard Ragenski, 27, refused to give a Federal Street panhandler “a dime for a cup of coffee,” the panhandler pulled a knife and said he’d give Ragenski something to remember him by. Ragenski was treated for four deep slashes on his back.