YEARS AGO FOR AUG. 25

Today is Saturday, Aug. 25, the 237th day of 2018. There are 128 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1718: Hundreds of French colonists arrive in Louisiana, with some settling in present-day New Orleans.

1875: Capt. Matthew Webb becomes the first person to swim across the English Channel, getting from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in 22 hours.

1916: President Woodrow Wilson signs an act establishing the National Park Service.

1944: During World War II, Paris is liberated by Allied forces after four years of Nazi occupation.

1967: George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party, is shot to death in the parking lot of a shopping center in Arlington, Va.

2001: Rhythm-and-blues singer Aaliyah is killed with eight others in a plane crash in the Bahamas; she was 22.

2009: Sen. Edward M. Kennedy dies at age 77 in Hyannis Port, Mass., after a battle with a brain tumor.

2013: Syria agrees to a U.N. investigation into an alleged chemical weapons attack outside Damascus.

2017: Hurricane Harvey, the fiercest hurricane to hit the U.S. in more than a decade, makes landfall near Corpus Christi, Texas, with 130 mph sustained winds; the storm would deliver five days of rain totaling close to 52 inches, the heaviest tropical downpour ever recorded in the continental U.S. The hurricane would leave at least 65 people dead.

VINDICATOR FILES

1993: Angry parents criticize Youngstown Schools Superintendent Alfred Tutela for establishing new, later school hours. High school hours will be from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.; junior high, 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.; and elementary, 8:45 a.m. to 3:15 p.m.

Kelly Cook of Columbiana is crowned queen, and Ben Foster of East Palestine king, on the opening day of the Columbiana County Fair.

Directors of the Mahoning Valley Sanitary District name Michael A. Iberis to the new post of executive director of the district that provides water for 300,000 customers.

1978: Leaders of the Ecumenical Coalition and Youngstown Mayor J. Phillip Richley are interviewed by NBC-TV for a report that will run in conjunction with the election of a new pope.

Martin Haber, vice president of Haber Furniture Store, tells the Downtown Lions Club that Youngstown should be looking to other cities for successful examples of revitalizing downtown. He cites Kalamazoo, Mich.; Winston-Salem, N.C.; and Eugene, Ore., as success stories.

Only 29 Youngstown City School District teachers are involuntarily transferred to comply with a U.S. District Court order to desegregate the faculty.

1968: Policemen in New Castle, Pa., gather more than 1,000 signatures on petitions that seek to overturn U.S. Supreme Court decisions that they say handcuff law-enforcement officers.

1943: In Los Angeles, Mary Pickford places a ceremonial panel to mark the completion of the S.S. Henry M. Robinson, named for the Ravenna-born Youngstown lawyer who left here to attain international fame and fortune in California.

Victor Marino, former Rayen and Ohio State football star, is one of a relatively few survivors rescued after the sinking of the U.S.S. Maddox near Sicily.

The Youngstown metropolitan area is one of three Ohio districts that showed a decline in population from April 1940 to March 1943. The Youngstown area fell from 372,566 to 363,875.