YEARS AGO FOR AUGUST 11

Today is Friday, Aug. 11, the 223rd day of 2017. There are 142 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1909: The steamship SS Arapahoe becomes the first ship in North America to issue an S.O.S. distress signal, off North Carolina’s Cape Hatteras.

1942: During World War II, Pierre Laval, prime minister of Vichy France, publicly declares that “the hour of liberation for France is the hour when Germany wins the war.”

1954: A formal peace takes hold in Indochina, ending more than seven years of fighting between the French and Communist Viet Minh.

1956: Abstract painter Jackson Pollock, 44, dies in an automobile accident on Long Island, N.Y.

1984: During a voice test for a paid political radio address, President Ronald Reagan jokes that he had “signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”

2014: Academy Award-winning actor and comedian Robin Williams, 63, dies in Tiburon, Calif., a suicide.

VINDICATOR FILES

1992: Youngstown State University plans to file suit to recover more than $50,000 owed by the defunct Youngstown Pride, the World Basketball League team owned by Michael Monus that played its games at the Beeghly Center.

The Ohio Board of Education approves a resolution opposing corporal punishment in schools, an action anti-spanking lobbyist plan to use in their push for a statewide ban on paddling.

Austintown Township trustees accept a citizens committee recommendation and agree to put a new form of township government on the November ballot.

1977: Youngstown Superintendent of Schools Robert Pegues threatens to resign if some members of the board continue to go around him to the district business manager with their complaints.

Cal D. Armstrong, a 16-year-old Utah Boy Scout who was struck by lightning during the National Scout Jamboree at Moraine State Park, dies in Jameson Memorial Hospital in New Castle, where he had been a patient for five days.

The General Motors Corp’s assembly division at Lordstown discontinues taking applications for work after an overwhelming response to an announcement that a second shift would be added in October.

1967: Campbell housewives who have complained that too much iron in the city’s water is yellowing their laundered clothes should have no more problems. A laundry bleach they were using was the problem, not the water supply.

A merger of Valley Mould & Iron Corp of Hubbard and Republic Industrial Corp. of New York City is approved by directors of both companies in separate meetings.

Laura Melville Montgomery, 91, one of Youngstown’s early women lawyers and a well-known artist, dies of a heart ailment.

Three junior police cadets assigned to the Teen Lounge at Oak Hill and Falls Avenue are praised by police and Community Action officers for their part in preventing trouble after the fatal stabbing of a 17-year-old.

1942: Miss Oay Fiber, 17, of East Liverpool dies after being shot in the chest by a 20-year-old seaman on leave from the Great Lakes naval training station. The gun, which was believed to be unloaded, discharged by accident, and no charges are anticipated.

Circus Day, which once provided rushing business for pickpockets, passes without one theft being reported. There were no parked cars looted or stripped either.

The Uncle Sam figure stolen from the lawn of R.L. Ruhlman has been returned. Children had put it on the lawn swing of a vacationing South Heights family who returned it to Ruhlman after they got home.