Today is Sunday, Aug. 30, the 242nd day of 2015

Today is Sunday, Aug. 30, the 242nd day of 2015. There are 123 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1861: Union Gen. John C. Fremont institutes martial law in Missouri and declares slaves there to be free. (However, Fremont’s emancipation order was countermanded by President Abraham Lincoln).

1862: Confederate forces win victories against the Union at the Second Battle of Bull Run in Manassas, Va., and the Battle of Richmond in Kentucky.

1905: Ty Cobb makes his major-league debut as a player for the Detroit Tigers, hitting a double in his first at-bat in a game against the New York Highlanders. (The Tigers won, 5-3.)

1935: The film “Anna Karenina,” MGM’s version of the Tolstoy novel starring Greta Garbo, opens in New York.

1945: U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur arrives in Japan to set up Allied occupation headquarters.

1954: President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, which is intended to promote private development of nuclear energy.

1963: The “Hot Line” communications link between Washington and Moscow goes into operation.

1967: The Senate confirms the appointment of Thurgood Marshall as the first black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

1983: Guion S. Bluford Jr. becomes the first black American astronaut to travel in space as he blasts off aboard the Challenger.

1984: The space shuttle Discovery is launched on its inaugural flight.

1986: Soviet authorities arrest Nicholas Daniloff, a correspondent for U.S. News and World Report, as a spy a week after American officials arrested Gennadiy Zakharov, a Soviet employee of the United Nations, on espionage charges.

1989: A federal jury in New York finds “hotel queen” Leona Helmsley guilty of income-tax evasion but acquits her of extortion. (Helmsley ended up serving 18 months behind bars, a month at a halfway house and two months under house arrest.)

1991: Azerbaijan declares its independence, joining the stampede of republics seeking to secede from the Soviet Union.

2005: A day after Hurricane Katrina hit, floods are covering 80 percent of New Orleans, looting continues to spread and rescuers in helicopters and boats pick up hundreds of stranded people.

2010: Vice President Joe Biden flies into Baghdad, where he seeks to reassure Iraq that America is not abandoning it as the U.S. military steps back.

An enormous drill begins preliminary work on carving a half-mile chimney through solid rock to free 33 men trapped in a Chilean mine.

Texas-born fugitive Edgar Valdez Villarreal, a suspected drug lord known as “the Barbie,” is arrested in Mexico State.

Seven-time Cy Young winner Roger Clemens pleads not guilty in Washington to charges of lying to Congress about whether he’d used steroids or human growth hormone. (Clemens goes on trial in July 2011; however, the case abruptly ends in a mistrial. He was acquitted in a retrial.)

2014: The U.S. military says fighter aircraft and unmanned drones have struck Islamic State militants near Mosul Dam.

Under cover of darkness, 40 Filipino peacekeepers escape their besieged outpost in the Golan Heights after a seven-hour gunbattle with Syrian rebels.

The St. Louis Rams cut Michael Sam, the first openly gay player drafted in the NFL.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: Justin Sopkovich, at six months old the world’s second youngest recipient of a heart transplant, arrives home in Youngstown after the transplant that took place at Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh when he was less than a month old.

Dr. Kirklyn Kerr, director of the Ohio Agricultural Research Development Centers, officially opens the 144th annual Canfield Fair, which he describes as the best county fair in the nation.

A winning $6 million Ohio Super Lotto ticket is sold in Warren, but a winner has not yet stepped forward. The winning numbers were 13, 17, 22, 28, 36 and 41.

1975: A mid-afternoon ear-splitting thunder and lightning storm puts a damper on second day attendance at the Canfield Fair, which was 41,823, about 10,000 fewer than a year earlier.

Mahoning County Common Pleas Judge Clyde W. Osborne denies a request for a temporary injunction filed by Pauline Bernard of Rosewae Drive seeking to stop the opening of mourning-dove hunting season, which the Ohio Department of Natural Resources says will open Sept. 1.

Father Nathan Willis, the only black clergyman serving in the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown, says the church should do more to recruit black nuns and priests for leadership roles.

1965: Mayor Anthony B. Flask is among three new directors elected by the Ohio Municipal League.

The Fellows Riverside Gardens and Garden Center receive a national award for outstanding community service.

The 119th Canfield Fair opens with fair directors expecting record crowds of about 300,000. Admission is $1.

1940: In a letter to city employees, Mayor William B. Spagnola warns that they are now covered by the Hatch Act, which prohibits them from taking part in political activities.

Cowboys of the Gatewood Rodeo capture four buffalo that escaped from the Canfield Fairgrounds into a section of undergrowth on the M.J. Neff farm.

Large Youngstown coal consumers file an appeal with Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes charging that the setting of minimum prices for bituminous coal is an “unlawful assumption of power.” The appellants include Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., Republic Steel Corp., Republic Rubber, General Fireproofing, the Youngstown Chamber of Commerce, the G.M. McKelvey Co. and the Strouss Hirshberg Co.