YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

Today is Friday, July 31, the 212th day of 2015. There are 153 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1715: A fleet of Spanish ships carrying gold, silver and jewelry sinks during a hurricane off the east Florida coast, scattering most of their treasure along the ocean floor. Of some 2,500 crew members, more than 1,000 die.

1777: The Marquis de Lafayette, a 19-year-old French nobleman, is made a major-general in the American Continental Army.

1875: The 17th president of the United States, Andrew Johnson, dies in Carter County, Tenn., at age 66.

1933: The radio series “Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy,” debuts on CBS radio station WBBM in Chicago.

1942: Oxfam International has its beginnings as the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief is founded in England.

1964: The American space probe Ranger 7 reaches the moon, transmitting pictures back to Earth before impacting the lunar surface.

1972: Democratic vice-presidential candidate Thomas Eagleton withdraws from the ticket with George McGovern after disclosures that Eagleton once had undergone psychiatric treatment.

1973: Delta Air Lines Flight 723, a DC-9, crashes while trying to land at Boston’s Logan International Airport, killing all 89 people on board.

1989: A pro-Iranian group in Lebanon releases a grisly videotape showing the body of American hostage William R. Higgins, a Marine lieutenant-colonel, dangling from a rope.

1991: President George H.W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev sign the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in Moscow.

2005: Police arrest seven people during a raid on an apartment in southern England, bringing to 21 the number in custody in the relentless hunt for accomplices in the failed July 21 transit bombings in London.

2010: Chelsea Clinton marries investment banker Marc Mezvinsky in the upstate New York village of Rhinebeck.

Orchestra leader Mitch Miller dies in New York at age 99.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: Ending months of contention between Youngstown Mayor Patrick Ungaro and city council, Ungaro agrees to a compromise that will reopen the Oakland Avenue fire station in the fall.

Mahoning County officials agree to buy a 2.9-acre parcel on the west end of downtown Youngstown for $275,000 as the site for a new county jail.

Eight years after committing General Motors Corp. to a new compact-car project, retiring GM chairman Roger B. Smith drives the first customer-ready Saturn off the assembly line at Spring Hill, Tenn.

1975: An early morning Mass opens the 27th Slovak Catholic Sokol National Gymnastics and Track and Field Meet at Austintown Fitch Stadium.

U.S. District Judge Thomas D. Lambros reaffirms the maximum five-year penitentiary sentence and $20,000 fine he handed racketeer Joey Naples in June for a probation violation.

Youngstown residents and industries could be without water if the city fails to pay its overdue wholesale water bill from the Mahoning Valley Sanitary District. The city is balking at a 42 percent increase in the bulk- water charge that was approved by the court of jurisdiction that oversees MVSD.

1965:Louis Leon, 76, falls to his death when a rung on a 12-foot ladder breaks while he was working on spouting at his home at 312 Custer St.

Five people are killed in a high-speed crash on state Route 14 , 4 miles west of East Palestine. Dead are Lorena Taylor, 29, of Beaver Falls, Pa.; her daughter, Kathy, 1; her son, Donald, 9; her father-in-law, Warren Taylor, 74, of Beaver Falls; and Sheila Witt, 16, of Rochester, Pa. The driver of the car, Joseph Taylor, 33, is in fair condition at City Hospital.

Sixteen Youngstown area Girl Scouts return from International Roundup in Idaho. More than 9,000 Scouts from 40 countries attended the encampment.

1940: Congressman Michael J. Kirwan of Youngstown is listed as “uncertain” in a poll of the Ohio delegation by the Cleveland Plain Dealer on how members will vote on a compulsory military-training bill.

The Youngstown Committee of the United States Committee for the Care of European Children stands ready to serve whenever the government completes arrangements for the admission of refugee children to the country. Mabel Marquis is elected chairman during a meeting of the committee at the YWCA.

Youngstown Municipal Court Judge Robert Nevin fines 11 people charged with possession of lottery slips $20 as he holds the third “bargain day” for purported pickup men.