Today is Sunday, July 26, the 207th day of 2015. There are 158 days left in the year.

Today is Sunday, July 26, the 207th day of 2015. There are 158 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1775: Benjamin Franklin becomes America’s first postmaster-general.

1788: New York becomes the 11th state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

1882: The Richard Wagner opera “Parsifal” premieres in Bayreuth, Germany.

1908: U.S. Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte orders creation of a force of special agents that becomes a forerunner of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

1925: Five days after the end of the Scopes Trial in Dayton, Tenn., prosecutor William Jennings Bryan dies at age 65. (Although Bryan had won a conviction against John T. Scopes for teaching Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, the verdict was later overturned.)

1945: President Harry S. Truman, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek issue the Potsdam Declaration, which called upon Imperial Japan to unconditionally surrender, or face “prompt and utter destruction.”

Churchill resigns as Britain’s prime minister after his Conservatives are soundly defeated by the Labour Party; Clement Attlee succeeds him.

1952: Argentina’s first lady, Eva Peron, dies in Buenos Aires at age 33.

King Farouk I of Egypt abdicates in the wake of a coup led by Gamal Abdel Nasser.

1956: The Italian liner Andrea Doria sinks off New England, some 11 hours after colliding with the Swedish liner Stockholm; at least 51 people die.

Egypt’s president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, nationalizes the Suez Canal.

1965: The Maldives become independent of Great Britain.

1971: Apollo 15 is launched from Cape Kennedy on America’s fourth successful manned mission to the moon.

1989: Mark Wellman, a 29-year-old paraplegic, reaches the summit of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park after hauling himself up the granite cliff 6 inches at a time over nine days.

1990: President George H.W. Bush signs the Americans with Disabilities Act.

1995: Businessman, former Michigan governor and U.S. housing secretary George W. Romney dies at age 88.

2005: America’s manned space program roars back to life with the launch of Discovery, 21/2 years after the Columbia disaster.

Six nations resume nuclear disarmament talks that North Korea had boycotted for 13 months, but little progress is made.

Cubs pitcher Greg Maddux records his 3,000th career strikeout against San Francisco in the third inning of a 3-2, 11-inning victory for the Giants.

2010: A U.N.-backed tribunal sentences the Khmer Rouge’s chief jailer, Kaing Guek Eav, to 35 years for overseeing the deaths of up to 16,000 people in Cambodia, with 16 years shaved off for time already served, reducing his sentence to 19 years.

A Spanish man who’d undergone the world’s first full face transplant appears before TV cameras; the 31-year-old, identified only as “Oscar,” thanks his doctors and the family of the donor.

Matt Garza pitches the first no-hitter in Tampa Bay Rays history, beating the Detroit Tigers 5-0.

2014: Hamas resumes rocket fire on Israel after rejecting its offer to extend a humanitarian cease-fire, the latest setback in international efforts to negotiate an end to the Gaza war.

The United States shutters its embassy in Libya and evacuates its diplomats to neighboring Tunisia under U.S. military escort as fighting intensifies between rival militias.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: Bill Toohey of Austintown, president of the Renner Old Oxford Chapter of the Beer Can Collectors of America, says a rare Renner’s Clipper can is worth as much as $1,500. The local club is named for the Youngstown brewery that went out of business in 1961.

A Conrail freight train derails near the Route 62 crossing in Hubbard, spilling an estimated 50 gallons of diesel fuel into Mud Run Creek.

Phar-Mor Inc., based in downtown Youngstown, will open its 200th store in Hermitage, a 70,000-square foot store in the Hermitage Towne Plaza on East State Street.

1975: The Youngstown City School District will get $9.4 million in state funding in 1975-76, and $9.6 million in 1976-77 under a new state foundation formula, an increase of $2 million over what was received in the previous two years.

Thirty-seven members of the Olive Pitts, a youth singing group from Mount Olivet United Church of Christ in North Lima, leave on an eight-day tour that will cover six states.

Peter Tsipis of Leetonia, an agent of the U.S. Treasury’s Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Enforcement Division, places first in the Regional Police Combat Pistol Championships in Canton.

1965: Demolition continues on the St. Stanislaus Church in Sharon, Pa., after a fire badly damages the structure. A new brick building seating 300 will be built at a cost of $250,000.

Darrell Askey, former Salem resident, who minored in music at Bowling Green State University, is getting singing roles in Broadway musicals, currently appearing in Richard Rodgers’ “Do I Hear a Waltz.”

The Lightning Express Co. on Grandview Avenue in New Castle, Pa., is destroyed by a $300,000 fire. Six tractor-trailers are destroyed, including some loaded with toys, shoes, washers and dryers and rugs.

1940: The worst heat wave in four years continues with the thermometer reaching 100 degrees and with four deaths attributed to the heat. Dead are Luther P. Bunce, 67, and William M. Seager, 55, both of Youngstown, of heat exhaustion; Robert Lindburg, 10, of Braddock, Pa., and Dominic Monaco, 17, of Niles, the latter two by drowning.

During a meeting at the Mahoning Valley Country Club the Youngstown Junior Chamber of Commerce unanimously endorses compulsory military training.

About 2,000 people fill the Idora Park grandstand and bleachers to applaud the second pops concert by the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra.