YEARS AGO FOR OCT. 15

Today is Sunday, Oct. 15, the 288th day of 2017. There are 77 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1783: The first manned balloon flight takes place in Paris as Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier ascends in a basket attached to a tethered Montgolfier hot-air balloon, rising to about 75 feet.

1815: Napoleon Bona-parte, deposed emperor of the French, arrives on the British-ruled South Atlantic island of St. Helena, where he spends the last 51/2 years of his life in exile.

1905: Claude Debussy’s “La Mer” (“The Sea”), a trio of symphonic sketches, premieres in Paris.

1914: The Clayton Antitrust Act, which expands on the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, is signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson.

1917: Dutch exotic dancer Mata Hari (Margaretha MacLeod), 41, convicted by a French military court of spying for the Germans, is executed by a firing squad outside Paris. (Maintaining her innocence to the end, Mata Hari refused a blindfold and blew a kiss to her executioners.)

1945: The former premier of Vichy France, Pierre Laval, is executed for treason.

1946: Nazi war criminal Hermann Goering fatally poisons himself hours before he was to have been executed.

1966: President Lyndon B. Johnson signs a bill creating the U.S. Department of Transportation.

VINDICATOR FILES

1992: A recent rash of weapons violations at New Castle High School, including one in which a high school football player fired a shot into a trash can, is prompting parents to demand the district make schools safer.

U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. will make his third appearance on the “Phil Donahue Show” during a program that will focus on the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Austintown Township trustees want to shut down the Austin Recycling Center on Dunlap Road after a fire caused by spontaneous combustion erupts in construction debris.

1977: Youngstown Mayor Jack C. Hunter and political leaders whose communities will be economically pressed as the result of the troubled steel industry will meet with federal officials in Washington on Oct. 20 and 21.

The Most Rev. William A. Hughes, auxiliary bishop of the Youngstown Catholic Diocese, will be the principal celebrant of a Mass recognizing the parents of 10 newly ordained priests and six newly professed nuns.

Todd Mehaffey clicks with Mark Pavicic on a 15-yard pass late in the first quarter to tally the only touchdown in the Poland Bulldogs’ victory over Girard. Jeff Wakefield’s 21-yard field goal was the only other score of the game.

1967: Dr. Carl Bracy, president of Mount Union College for 13 years, resigns, citing personal reasons. Donald Weber, vice president of the college, is named acting president.

For the first time in this century, Mahoning County outside Youngstown has more qualified voters than those inside the city. The city has 68,579 voters and the county 71,000.

One of the most modern training workshops in northwestern Pennsylvania will be opened in December by the Mercer County Association for the Retarded in Hickory Township.

1942: With sirens shrieking, a 25-piece military band playing stirring music, the special Army Recruiting Caravan, moves into position on Federal Street. It is in Youngstown to recruit 18- and 19-year-olds.

Youngstown housewives have until Oct. 31 to use their No. 8 sugar stamps, good for 5 pounds of sugar. The No. 9 stamp will be good for only 3 pounds.

Carbon Limestone Co., Poland, is the low bidder for supplying the engineering department with 740 tons of asphaltic concrete. L.F. Donnell Co. is low bidder on a panel truck at $725.