YEARS AGO FOR JUNE 8

Today is Thursday, June 8, the 159th day of 2017. There are 206 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1042: Edward the Confessor becomes King of England, beginning a reign of 231/2 years.

1845: Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the United States, dies in Nashville, Tenn.

1920: The Republican National Convention opened in Chicago; its delegates would end up nominating Warren G. Harding of Ohio for president.

1942: Bing Crosby records “Silent Night” and “Adeste Fideles” ("O Come All Ye Faithful") in Los Angeles for Decca Records.

1953: The U.S. Supreme Court rules unanimously that restaurants in the District of Columbia could not refuse to serve blacks.

1967: During the six-day Middle East war, 34 American servicemen are killed when Israel attacks the USS Liberty, a Navy intelligence-gathering ship in the Mediterranean Sea. (Israel later said the Liberty had been mistaken for an Egyptian vessel.)

1972: During the Vietnam War, an Associated Press photographer took a picture of a screaming 9-year-old girl as she ran naked and severely burned from the scene of a South Vietnamese napalm attack.

1995: U.S. Marines rescue Capt. Scott O’Grady, whose F-16C fighter jet had been shot down by Bosnian Serbs on June 2.

2012: President Barack Obama declares “the private sector is doing fine,” prompting Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to ask, “Is he really that out of touch?” (Obama quickly clarified his remarks, saying it was “absolutely clear that the economy is not doing fine.”)

VINDICATOR FILES

1992: With Mahoning County jails overflowing with prisoners, some judges have turned to an alternative form of sentencing: electronically monitored house arrest.

Bobby Silvers of Salem is the single-car champion at the Akron Soap Box Derby for the Physically Challenged.

The Moving Wall, a half-scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., is drawing veterans and nonveterans to Leetonia.

1977: J. Phillip Richley, the Democratic candidate for Youngstown mayor, and Emanuel Catsoules, the Republican, emerge as easy victors in their party primaries, which attracted fewer city electors to the polls than any primary since two-year terms for mayor were instituted in 1947.

Area law-enforcement agencies are on the lookout for a band of gypsies and their queen who invaded two Federal Plaza West jewelry stores. Employees at King’s and Brenner’s said a woman accompanied by six to eight children, all about 10 or 11 years old, swarmed into the store, creating distractions. They were foiled at King’s, but escaped with about $35,000 in diamonds from Brenner’s.

1967: A Kmart department store will be built on a site at Boardman-Poland Road and South Avenue. (The store closed in 2016.)

Kathleen Lynden, Vindicator spelling champion, is tripped up on her seventh round in the 40th national spelling bee. She misspelled “whippoorwill.”

Poland Village Council passes an ordinance to rezone a Boardman-Poland Road lot to allow a $50,000 colonial-design complex proposed by Machine Design Service Co.

1942: The new Market Street Playhouse is being prepared for the opening of “Camille at Roaring Camp.” Helen Moyer and George Bishop have the leads.

A board of religious education will be formed by Youngstown Protestant churches to direct the work of weekday instruction of religion in city schools.

Dr. Leonard Allison, a graduate of Lowellville High School, begins work as aquatic biologist for the Michigan Department of Conservation.