YEARS AGO

Today is Tuesday, June 21, the 173rd day of 2016. There are 193 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1788: The United States Constitution takes effect as New Hampshire becomes the ninth state to ratify it.

1834: Cyrus Hall McCormick receives a patent for his reaping machine.

1913: Georgia “Tiny” Broadwick becomes the first woman to parachute from an airplane as she jumps over Los Angeles.

1963: Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini is chosen during a conclave of his fellow cardinals to succeed the late Pope John XXIII; the new pope takes the name Paul VI.

1964: Civil-rights workers Michael H. Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James E. Chaney are slain in Philadelphia, Miss.; their bodies would be found buried in an earthen dam six weeks later.

1989: A sharply divided Supreme Court rules that burning the American flag as a form of political protest is protected by the First Amendment.

2015: Four days after it welcomed a young stranger who sat for prayer and then reportedly opened fire, killing nine people, the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church has its first worship service with themes of love and healing, plus a note of defiance. (Suspect Dylann Roof faces murder charges.)

VINDICATOR FILES

1991: The Ohio Environmental Board of Review suggests that all parties in the debate over a proposed soil purification incinerator in Lowellville reach an agreement, but opponents say there are no grounds for compromise. They want construction of the plant by Gennaro Paving blocked.

Neighbors of a farm on Pothour-Wheeler Road in Hubbard Township where effluent from home septic tanks is being spread say they are worried about the smell and possible contamination of groundwater. Frank Petrich says there is no danger and that the practice is not only legal, but approved by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Warren’s new police chief, Thomas D. Hutson, says the arrest of 10 men on charges of soliciting after they approached a police undercover officer on High Street is the first step in a crackdown on prostitution in the city.

1976: Some 5,500 people nearly fill the grandstands at the Canfield Fairgrounds at the concluding service of Dr. Leighton Ford’s Youngstown Reachout crusade.

About 115 people, most of them volunteer firefighters, are treated at area hospitals after inhaling fumes from 11,000 bales of hay that became wet while a fire was being fought at a dairy farm near Kinsman. The wet hay, which had been chemically treated, produced a chlorine gas.

Consolidated Natural Gas Supply Corp. and Dravo Corp. announce plans to build a $100 million coal gasification plant in Northeast Ohio. Warren is one of the sites being considered.

1966: The loss is set at $1 million in a fire that swept through six buildings of the Youngstown Foundry and Machine Co. at West Federal and Reserve streets.

The Youngstown NAACP, led by its president, Nathanel Lee, pickets the Youngstown Board of Education, claiming that the board discriminates in its hiring practices and teacher assignments.

1941: Virtually all the homes and other private buildings and vacant lots in the village of McDonald have been sold by the Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corp. to John W. Galbreath, a Columbus real-estate operator. Galbreath plans 250 new homes and a theater.

The U.S. House of Representatives allocates $7 million for construction of the Berlin Dam after a plea by Rep. Michael Kirwan, who said the industrial Mahoning Valley needs a reliable water source.

The Youngstown Police Department gets a portable urinalysis machine that will enable testing of motorists for sobriety.