YEARS AGO

Today is Friday, July 29, the 211th day of 2016. There are 155 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1890: Artist Vincent van Gogh, 37, dies of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound in Auvers-sur-Oise, France.

1921: Adolf Hitler becomes the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party.

1958: President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating NASA.

1967: An accidental rocket launch aboard the supercarrier USS Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin results in a fire and explosions that kill 134 servicemen.

1976: The first of eight shootings ascribed to the serial killer known as “Son of Sam” occurs on a street in The Bronx, N.Y., as a gunman kills 18-year-old Donna Lauria and wounds her friend, 19-year-old Jody Valenti. (In a yearlong reign of terror, the shooter would claim five more lives and wound six more people until the arrest of David Berkowitz, who is serving a life prison sentence.)

1981: Britain’s Prince Charles marries Lady Diana Spencer in a glittering ceremony at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. (However, the couple divorced in 1996.)

1994: Abortion opponent Paul Hill shoots and kills Dr. John Bayard Britton and Britton’s bodyguard, James H. Barrett, outside the Ladies Center clinic in Pensacola, Fla. (Hill was executed in Sept. 2003.)

2004: Sen. John Kerry accepts the Democratic presidential nomination at the party’s convention in Boston.

2006: The U.S. command announces it is sending 3,700 troops to Baghdad to try to quell sectarian violence.

VINDICATOR FILES

1991: Milwaukee mass-murderer Jeffrey Dahmer gives detectives a map showing them where he buried his first victim, hitchhiker Steven M. Hicks, on the Dahmer family farm near Akron in 1978.

A proposal by the city of Niles to solve the city’s overgrown tree problems by hiring a private contractor to trim trees around electrical lines is rejected by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 506.

1976: The auto industry’s bust-to-boom turnaround sends General Motors’ profits in the second quarter soaring to a record $909 million.

Two men posing as FBI agents gain entry to the Jackson Township home of Mrs. Stella Lacusky, bind her and take cash, checks and jewelry valued at $4,000.

Willie Davenport, 33, a Howland High School graduate, wins a bronze medal in the 110-meter high hurdles in the Olympic Games in Montreal.

1966: A frequent customer enters Truman’s Dry Cleaners and Laundry on Market Street with another man, signs for his laundry and then robs clerk Mary Banjo of an undisclosed amount of cash.

Some 200 exhausted members of two Youngstown National Guard units return after nine days of duty in riot-torn sections of Cleveland.

Dr. Samuel Goldberg is elected president of the Jewish Federation of Youngtown, succeeding Leslie Spero.

Teenagers looking for money and intent on vandalism wreck the inside of the home of Susan Dohun, a 73-year-old widow, at 302 N. Center St.

1941: Youngstown silk hosiery dealers report a rush in sales as a result of the freezing of Japanese assets and the expected suspension of raw silk exports. Stores report selling six to 12 pairs of hosiery to individual customers.

Going out of the real-estate business, Carnegie-Illinois Steel transfers its holdings of 61 Youngstown homes to Youngstown Properties Co., which is composed of Clevelanders.

William T. “Buck” Lally, a 28-year veteran of the Youngstown police department, is named a detective.