YEARS AGO

Today is Thursday, Oct. 29, the 302nd day of 2015. There are 63 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1618: Sir Walter Raleigh, the English courtier, military adventurer and poet, is executed in London for treason.

1901: President William McKinley’s assassin, Leon Czolgosz, is electrocuted.

1929: Wall Street crashes on “Black Tuesday,” heralding the start of America’s Great Depression.

1940: A blindfolded Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson draws the first number – 158 – from a glass bowl in America’s first peacetime military draft.

1964: Thieves make off with the Star of India and other gems from the American Museum of Natural History in New York. (The Star and most of the other gems were recovered; three men were convicted of stealing them.)

1966: The National Organization for Women is formally organized during a conference in Washington, D.C.

1987: After the confirmation defeat of Robert H. Bork to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, President Ronald Reagan announces his choice of Douglas H. Ginsburg, a nomination that fell apart over revelations of Ginsburg’s previous marijuana use.

1994: Francisco Martin Duran fires more than two dozen shots from a semiautomatic rifle at the White House. (Duran was later convicted of trying to assassinate President Bill Clinton and was sentenced to 40 years in prison.)

1998: Sen. John Glenn, at age 77, roars back into space aboard the shuttle Discovery, retracing the trail he’d blazed for America’s astronauts 36 years earlier.

2012: Superstorm Sandy comes ashore in New Jersey and slowly marches inland, devastating coastal communities and causing widespread power outages; the storm and its aftermath are blamed for at least 182 deaths in the U.S.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: Unable to attract growth in the past 10 years, Liberty Township officials are looking to revise outdated zoning regulations and increase the township’s water sources to change the tide.

Mahoning County Common Pleas judges accept a committee’s plan designed to alleviate overcrowding in the Mahoning County Jail with a stipulation that they decide who stays and who gets out.

A Mahoning Valley Sanitary District lawyer says the district will not release financial information on a $60 million capital improvement program to Youngstown officials until the city resolves a disagreement over a 3.4 percent rate increase. The city has been putting the 3.4 percent payment in escrow since August.

1975: A Vindicator straw poll shows that Mayor Jack C. Hunter, a Republican, and George Vukovich, a Democrat, are running neck-and-neck.

Youngstown city council’s special investigation committee votes unanimously to dismiss a charge that Police Chief Donald G. Baker delayed investigation of a police burglary ring after Baker testified for several hours before the committee.

Vandals set a fire causing $5,000 damage to the vacant Science Hill School at 935 E. Liberty Road,

1965: The father of seven children described by Youngstown school officials as neglected and lacking discipline is sentenced to 30 days in jail by Juvenile Court Referee Joseph Bryan. The oldest of the boys, 16, is committed to the Ohio Youth Commission on multiple juvenile offenses.

A record low of 18 degrees and overnight snow bring an early end to the apple crop. Wayne Lloyd, a Salem fruit grower, says trees left on the tree are good only for cider.

Donna Fisher is elected engineer’s sweetheart for Youngstown University’s engineer’s ball. In her court are Gayle Fergus, Bonnie Rudiak and Juanita Wehrle.

John P. Gillespie, dean of men at Youngstown University, receives the Frank Purnell Award at the Youngstown Chamber of Commerce Bosses Night.

1940: The body of an unidentified woman who had been slain and stuffed into a barrel is found on a highway in an exclusive North Side residential district of East Liverpool.

A group of Niles women organize an auxiliary to the Knights Templar. Officers are Mrs. Charles Jordan, Mrs. Elmer James, Mrs. William G. Jones and Mrs. T.G. Anderson.

Water lines and sanitary sewers will be constructed on 11 streets in Girard as a WPA project.