YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

Today is Saturday, July 18, the 199th day of 2015. There are 166 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

A.D. 64: The Great Fire of Rome begins, consuming most of the city for about a week. (Some blamed the fire on Emperor Nero, who in turn blamed Christians.)

1792: American naval hero John Paul Jones died in Paris at age 45.

1872: Britain enacts voting by secret ballot.

1925: Adolf Hitler publishes the first volume of his autobiographical screed, “Mein Kampf (My Struggle).”

1932: The United States and Canada sign a treaty to develop the St. Lawrence Seaway.

1947: President Harry S. Truman signs a Presidential Succession Act that places the speaker of the House and the Senate president pro tempore next in the line of succession after the vice president.

1969: Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., leaves a party on Chappaquiddick Island near Martha’s Vineyard with Mary Jo Kopechne, 28; some time later, Kennedy’s car goes off a bridge into the water. (Kennedy was able to escape, but Kopechne drowned.)

1976: At the Montreal Olympics, Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci receives the first perfect score of 10 with her routine on uneven parallel bars. (Comaneci would go on to receive six more 10s at Montreal.)

1984: Gunman James Huberty opens fire at a McDonald’s fast-food restaurant in San Ysidro, Calif., killing 21 people before being shot dead by police.

Walter F. Mondale wins the Democratic presidential nomination in San Francisco.

2005: Hurricane Emily roars across Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, ripping roofs off luxury hotels, stranding thousands of tourists and leaving hundreds of residents homeless.

2014: The United Nations Security Council has an emergency meeting a day after the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 with the loss of all 298 people on board, demanding that pro-Russia rebels who controlled the eastern Ukraine crash site give immediate, unfettered access to independent investigators.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: The Youngstown Board of Education hires Donna Samaldino as chief of food services and Harry Evans as chief of maintenance, sparking a complaint by the AFSCME union that promotions were not made from within the ranks. Don L. Hanni III casts the lone vote against the hirings.

Commercial Intertech of Youngstown moves from 76th to 73rd on the 1990 roster of Ohio’s largest 200 companies. Mahoning National Bank rose from 173rd to 157th while CSC Industries Inc. of Warren slipped from 95 to 107.

The Phar-Mor Million Dollar Championship LPGA golf tournament gets underway at Squaw Creek Country Club.

1975: Woodside Receiving Hospital is phasing out its outpatient department, which will shift the burden of care from the state onto two mental-health centers and boost the cost to local taxpayers.

Some 1,200 first-shift employees at the Fisher Body plant at the GM Lordstown complex walk out, idling 2,200 employees at Fisher. A continuing strike would shut down the Vega-Astre assembly line.

Five former Youngstown patrolmen who resigned in the 1974 burglary scandal have filed applications with the Civil Service Commission for reinstatement. They will be given hearings in August after the commission rejected their reinstatement.

1965: Graduates of past Boardman High classes act as hostesses for Boardman’s second annual Community Day at Boardman Park. Myrtle Hutchinson Fulton, the only graduate of the class of 1906, is a special guest.

A new law proposed by the Johnson administration to require double pay for overtime work is attracting biter opposition from Youngstown area business leaders, who say it would threaten the area’s budding economic renaissance.

Ivan R. Wolf returns to Youngstown as vice president of the Youngstown unit of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. He is widely known in food circles in the Youngstown area, having served with A&P in various capacities.

1940: More than 75 foursomes compete at the Youngstown Chamber of Commerce annual golf tournament at Southern Hills Country Club.

William Klee, office manager for Copperweld Steel Co. in Warren, says the new $3 million plant is nearly complete.

Writing from Chicago, Clingan Jackson, Vindicator political writer, says the forces supporting President Franklin Roosevelt were too strong for the few voices that called for the party to honor precedent and reject nominating the president for a third term. Roosevelt was drafted with 946 votes on the first ballot.