YEARS AGO FOR SEPT. 20

Today is Wednesday, Sept. 20, the 263rd day of 2017. There are 102 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1870: Italian troops take control of the Papal States, leading to the unification of Italy.

1958: Martin Luther King Jr. is seriously wounded during a book signing at a New York City department store when he is stabbed in the chest by Izola Curry. (Curry was later found mentally incompetent. She died at a Queens, N.Y., nursing home in 2015 at age 98.)

1962: James Meredith, a black student, is blocked from enrolling at the University of Mississippi by Democratic Gov. Ross R. Barnett. (Meredith was later admitted.)

1967: The Cunard liner RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 is christened by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II in Clydebank, Scotland.

1973: In their so-called “battle of the sexes,” tennis star Billie Jean King beats Bobby Riggs in straight sets

2016: In their final speeches at the annual gathering of world leaders, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon rails against leaders who keep “feeding the war machine” in Syria, while U.S. President Barack Obama said there was no military solution to the five-year conflict.

VINDICATOR FILES

1992: Municipal Judge Andrew Polovischak ignores pleas by police and the city prosecutor to release a man who was mistakenly arrested. Police officer Debbie Schilling goes to Judge Patrick Kerrigan and tells him Emmet Perkins was in custody instead of his brother, and Kerrigan orders the man’s immediate release.

The Southington Local School District will no longer provide driver’s education, joining most other Trumbull County districts that have already discontinued the course.

Lee Anthony Krolopp, 12, the Heart Association’s 1980 Heart Child who received a heart transplant March 29, 1991, is playing Hubbard Community soccer.

1977: Campbell city and school officials fear a “devastating effect” that will threaten the city’s viability if Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. shuts down its Campbell Works.

The Steel Communities Coalition and the United Steelworkers union say separately that they will put pressure on President Jimmy Carter and Congress to react to the announced cutbacks by Sheet & Tube.

Enrollment in the Poland Local School District decreases by 88 pupils from the previous year, dropping to 2,707.

1967: Trumbull County Probate Judge Reed S. Battin names a six-member citizen committee to make periodic inspections of all jails in the county in the wake of a Youngstown youth’s claim that he was sexually assaulted in the county jail.

At Long Bin, The Vindicator’s Fred Childress meets Barbara Lynn of Youngstown, who works at the Red Cross center, and Youngstowner Gerry Cuttridge, who is a personal security guard for Lt. Gen. Fred Weyand, commander of the Second Field Force.

Seven police officers from Youngstown, Warren and Liberty Township are honored for service beyond the normal call of duty: Anthony Pilolli, Sgt. Mizel Stewart, Joseph Hudak Jr., Steve Papalas, Larry Montecalvo, Thomas Lepola and Richard Vrbancic.

1942: Oliver C. Vodrey Jr., a 27-year-old fighter pilot from East Liverpool, is featured in a Chicago Daily News story on U.S. raids against Japan.

Truscon Steel Co., one of Youngstown’s most important war material producers, becomes the first large industrial concern in Youngstown and one of the first in the state to hit 100 percent in the war bond buying program.

Some 5,000 Youngstown College football fans brave a driving rain to watch the Penguins win their season’s opener over South Dakota State, 14-0.