YEARS AGO

Today is Saturday, June 27, the 178th day of 2015. There are 187 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1787: English historian Edward Gibbon completes work on his six-volume work, “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”

1844: Mormon leader Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, are killed by a mob in Carthage, Ill.

1864: Confederate forces repel a frontal assault by Union troops in the Civil War Battle of Kennesaw Mountain in Georgia.

1905: The Industrial Workers of the World is founded in Chicago.

1922: The first Newberry Medal, recognizing excellence in children’s literature, is awarded to “The Story of Mankind” by Hendrik Willem van Loon.

1944: During World War II, American forces liberate the French port of Cherbourg from the Germans.

1955: Illinois enacts the nation’s first automobile seat-belt law. (The law did not require cars to have seat belts, but that they be made seat-belt-ready.)

1957: More than 500 people are killed when Hurricane Audrey slams through coastal Louisiana and Texas.

1963: President John F. Kennedy spends the first full day of a visit to Ireland, the land of his ancestors, stopping by the County Wexford home of his great-grandfather, Patrick Kennedy, who had emigrated to America in 1848.

1974: President Richard Nixon opens an official visit to the Soviet Union.

1985: The legendary Route 66, which originally stretched from Chicago to Santa Monica, Calif., passes into history as officials decertify the road.

1990: NASA announces that a flaw in the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope is preventing the instrument from achieving optimum focus. (The problem was traced to a mirror that had not been ground to exact specifications; corrective optics were later installed to fix the problem.)

1995: Jodi Huisentruit, 27, an anchorwoman for KIMT-TV in Mason City, Iowa, mysteriously disappears; her fate has never been determined.

2005: The Supreme Court rules, in a pair of 5-4 decisions, that displaying the Ten Commandments on government property is constitutionally permissible in some cases but not in others.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: Mahoning County commissioners vote to impose a $10 license-plate tax, which would produce an estimated $1.9 million for road and bridge maintenance.

Republican gubernatorial candidate George Voinovich says he has given unequivocal backing to the proposed Hubbard Expressway, a 10-mile, $46 million link between Interstate 80 west of Hubbard and Interstate 680 in Youngstown.

The director of Ohio’s Development office says that Warren has been eliminated as a possible site for a proposed $225 million coal-liquification plant.

1975: The need to increase campaign-finance money and to broaden its appeal are the two major problems facing the Republican Party in Ohio, state GOP Chairman Kent B. McGough tells 60 Republicans from Mahoning, Trumbull, Ashtabula, Geauga and Portage counties during a seminar at Holiday Inn West.

Mahoning County records unemployment of 9.8 percent in May, down from earlier in the year, but still well above the state average of 8.3 percent.

Mahoning County prosecutor issues an opinion that baseball fields may be built on residential land on Indianola Road in Boardman Township over the objections of some neighbors. The land is owned by the Youngstown Hospital Association.

1965: The Ohio Highway Patrol adds four new troopers to Northeast Ohio barracks: Charles Gates, Canfield; James Reed, Mansfield; Walter Ashbridge, Ashtabula; and Ora Barnett, Warren.

Youngstown’s B’nai B’rith sponsors a “Day at the Races” at Thistledown Race Track.

Mrs. J. Ella Steffen is installed as president of the Altrusa Club by Betty March, the club’s first president.

1940: Cowboy movie star Tom Mix and his horse, Tony II, lead a parade of 2,000 Vindicator carrier salesmen through downtown Youngstown. Traffic Commissioner Clarence Coppersmith estimates the crowd along the route at 75,000.

The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. opens a new 8,000-square-foot supermarket at 15 N. Walnut Street.

The Youngstown Chamber of Commerce asks local employers to cooperate in the nation’s new war preparedness plan, which will keep national guardsmen at three weeks of summer camp rather than the traditional two.