YEARS AGO

Today is Saturday, Oct. 3, the 276th day of 2015. There are 89 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1789: President George Washington declares Nov. 26, 1789, a day of Thanksgiving to express gratitude for the creation of the United States of America.

1863: President Abraham Lincoln proclaims the last Thursday in November Thanksgiving Day.

1922: Rebecca L. Felton, D-Ga., becomes the first woman to be appointed to the U.S. Senate (however, she ends up serving only a day).

1932: Iraq becomes independent of British administration.

1944: During World War II, U.S. Army troops crack the Siegfried Line north of Aachen, Germany.

1955: “Captain Kangaroo” and “The Mickey Mouse Club” premiere on CBS and ABC, respectively.

1974: Frank Robinson is named Major League Baseball’s first black manager as he is placed in charge of the Cleveland Indians.

1990: West Germany and East Germany end 45 years of postwar division, declaring the creation of a reunified country.

1995: The jury in the O.J. Simpson murder trial in Los Angeles finds the former football star not guilty of the 1994 slayings of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman (however, Simpson later would be found liable for damages in a civil trial).

2008: O.J. Simpson is found guilty of robbing two sports-memorabilia dealers at gunpoint in a Las Vegas hotel room. (Simpson was later sentenced to nine to 33 years in prison.)

2014: An Internet video was released showing an Islamic State group militant beheading British hostage Alan Henning, the fourth such killing carried out by the extremist group being targeted by U.S.-led airstrikes.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: Five Campbell Memorial High School students, including three members of the football team, have been implicated in the beating of a Struthers teenager after a party on Notre Dame Drive.

Long-standing overcrowding in Mahoning County and Youngstown jails leads Mahoning County commissioners to close both facilities to additional prisoners.

A Rayen School drama teacher, Sally Ifill, is preparing to return to school after being hospitalized for four days after she was knocked unconscious to the ground while trying to break up a fight.

1975: Wallace Hirschfield, president of the Ohio Farm Bureau, tells 100 members of the Mahoning County Farm Bureau that there will be major food shortages in the next few years for Americans if the government does not stop meddling in the world food market.

The lawyer for Larry Myers, a state highway patrolman wounded by Steelers defensive tackle Ernie Holmes during a rampage in March 1973, says Holmes has yet to pay a $25,000 personal injury verdict to Myers.

Stewart Hume, who works for Mahoning National Bank, is elected president of the Downtown Optimist Club.

1965: The Youngstown Area United Appeal opens its 1965 campaign with a goal of $1.67 million.

Navy Coach Bill Elias rates Duncan Ingraham, former Poland High School star, among the finest defensive backs he’s ever seen.

Mary Christine Merriman of Hartford is crowned queen of the annual Hartford Apple Festival.

Hoover’s Restaurant on North Street in New Castle, Pa., closes after a 50th anniversary party. Owner Mearl Hoover is moving to Riverside, Calif.

1940: President Franklin Roosevelt has spent 71/2 years trying to divide the American people into groups and classes and has developed a program that will bankrupt the nation, Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie tells a crowd estimated as high as 35,000 people in Youngstown’s Central Square.

A $16 minimum weekly wage is voted for beauty operators in the Youngstown area by the cosmetology minimum wage board in Columbus.

The Rt. Rev. Msgr. Joseph P. Hurley, former assistant pastor of St. Columba, most recently attached to the papal secretary of state in Rome, will be consecrated at the Vatican as bishop of St. Augustine, Fla.