Monday, July 31, 2017
Today is Monday, July 31, the 212th day of 2017. There are 153 days left in the year.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
On this date in:
1556: St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, dies in Rome.
1777: During the Revolutionary War, the Marquis de Lafayette, a 19-year-old French nobleman, is made a major-general in the American Continental Army.
1930: The radio character “The Shadow” debuts as narrator of the “Detective Story Hour” on CBS Radio.
1957: The Distant Early Warning Line, a system of radar stations designed to detect Soviet bombers approaching North America, goes into operation.
1989: A pro-Iranian group in Lebanon releases a grisly videotape showing the body of American hostage William R. Higgins, a Marine lieutenant-colonel, dangling from a rope.
1991: President George H.W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev sign the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in Moscow.
2012: Three Indian electric grids collapse in a cascade, cutting power to 620 million people in the world’s biggest blackout.
VINDICATOR FILES
1992: Heavy rains sweep through Youngstown’s North Side and Liberty Township. The pharmacy and hemodialysis departments at Northside Medical Center are flooded and the Jewish Community Center gets 4 feet of water in its lower level.
Kenneth Berry of Greensburg, Pa., who was wounded in a scud missile attack on the 475th Quartermaster Group, an Army Reserve unit based in Farrell, during the Iraq War stands to lose his civilian job as an Army mechanic because of his injuries.
Craig Beach Mayor Julius Yuhasz counters criticism from a council member on his use of a police cruiser, saying that any time he has driven a police vehicle, it has been for official village business. As to falling revenue from mayor’s court, Yuhasz says people are obeying the law more.
1977: The Western Reserve Transit Authority authorizes Executive Director Joseph Albanese to end two routes that take buses outside the city, to Southern Park Mall and Boardman Plaza. Elimination of another route, to Eastwood Mall, is being considered.
Vindicator Business Editor George R. Reiss writes that unless American steelmakers are able to boost lagging expansion, the United States will probably be pushed by Japan to third place as a steel-making nation. The Soviet Union is first.
Charles A. “Chuck” Perazich is named sports editor of The Vindicator, succeeding Lawrence Stolle, who died after 50 years at the paper.
1967: Some 350 students are enrolled for fall classes at the Shenango Valley Campus of Penn State University.
Catholic and Protestant churches and Jewish synagogues in the Youngstown area respond with special services to President Lyndon Johnson’s call for prayers for racial peace.
Alan Pauley, former Youngstowner, is named administrative assistant at St. Elizabeth Hospital.
1942: Nearly all Mahoning County physicians have received telegrams from the recruiting board in Columbus instructing them to apply for Army commissions within 48 hours.
A.J. Wey, general manager of the Catholic Universe Bulletin in Cleveland, files a $10,000 slander suit against the Rev. John M. Crann, pastor of St. Charles Church, accusing the priest of referring to Wey as “viciously Nazi and un-American” in a sermon.
Mahoning County Engineer Robert J. Schomer resigns and leaves immediately for Camp Claiborne, La., to report as a captain in the Army Corps of Engineers.
Youngstown’s special vice squad headed by Traffic Commissioner Clarence Coppersmith is abolished by acting Police Chief Andrew Przelomski.