YEARS AGO

Today is Wednesday, Aug. 31, the 244th day of 2016. There are 122 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1886: An earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.3 devastates Charleston, S.C., killing at least 60 people, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

1916: The musical revue “The Big Show,” featuring the song “Poor Butterfly” by Raymond Hubbell and John Golden, opens at New York’s Hippodrome.

1939: The first issue of Marvel Comics, featuring the Human Torch, is published by Timely Publications in New York.

1965: The U.S. House of Representatives joins the Senate in voting to establish the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

1972: At the Munich Summer Olympics, American swimmer Mark Spitz wins his fourth and fifth gold medals.

1997: A car crash in Paris claims the lives of Princess Diana, Dodi Fayed and their driver, Henri Paul.

2006: Iran defies a U.N. deadline to stop enriching uranium.

2011: The Wartime Contracting Commission issues a report saying the U.S. had lost billions of dollars to waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan.

VINDICATOR FILES

1991: Warren no longer houses women in the city jail, and prostitutes working downtown know it, strutting their stuff with a new brazenness.

Twenty-four middle-school teachers from Mahoning and Trumbull counties learn a bit about education for the 21st century, tuning in from Canfield, Austintown, Hubbard and Youngstown State University for a high-tech workshop that originated in Illinois.

1976: A three-month investigation by Mahoning County detectives leads to the arrest of two women – a madam and one of her half-dozen call girls – on charges of operating a prostitution ring. Clients were solicited in Austintown and then sent to the Holiday Inn in North Jackson for a charge of $30.

Back-to-back record-low morning temperatures of 41 and 43 degrees are registered at Youngstown Municipal Airport.

Carmen S. Conglose, who has worked for the city of Youngstown for 25 years, is named head of the department of public works, succeeding Edmund J. Salata, who has accepted a job at Youngstown State University.

1966: Private-duty nurses of District No. 3, Ohio State Nurses Association, vote to forgo any pay raise. Nurses received an increase from $20 to $22 per day earlier in the year and decided another raise would not be in the public interest.

The Mahoning County Welfare Department, which has been paying $33 per day to Youngstown hospitals for indigent patients, faces increases to $37.87 at the Youngstown Hospital Association and to $36.38 at St. Elizabeth Hospital.

Damage is estimated at $350 from a firebomb thrown through the window of the Hilltop Cafe at 1901 Hillman St.

1941: Adequate voting machines to conduct primary and general elections in Mahoning County would cost about $390,000, says Russell Griffen of the Automatic Voting Machine Co. of Jamestown, N.Y.

Money enough to build 7 miles of new cement sidewalks was paid by Youngstown in 1940 to settle damages and injury claims and court judgments because scores of people fell on cracked and crumbling sidewalks.

Youngstown public schools will open under a new superintendent, George A Bowman. Enrollment this school year stands at 29,000 students. (The district has about 5,500 students today.)