YEARS AGO FOR JULY 15

YEARS AGO

Today is Sunday, July 15, the 196th day of 2018. There are 169 days left in the year.

Associated Press

On this date in:

1799: French soldiers in Egypt discover the Rosetta Stone, which proves instrumental in deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.

1870: Georgia becomes the last Confederate state to be readmitted to the Union.

1910: The term “Alzheimer’s disease” is used to describe a progressive form of presenile dementia in the book “Clinical Psychiatry” by German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin, who credited the work of his colleague, Alois Alzheimer, in identifying the condition.

1932: President Herbert Hoover announces he is slashing his own salary by 20 percent, from $75,000 to $60,000 a year; he also cuts Cabinet members’ salaries by 15 percent, from $15,000 to $12,750 a year.

1964: Sen. Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona was nominated for president by the Republican national convention in San Francisco.

1971: President Richard Nixon delivers a televised address in which he announces that he has accepted an invitation to visit the People’s Republic of China.

1976: A 36-hour kidnap ordeal begins for 26 schoolchildren and their bus driver as they are abducted near Chowchilla, Calif., by three gunmen and imprisoned in an underground cell. (The captives escaped unharmed; the kidnappers were caught.)

1979: President Jimmy Carter delivers his “malaise” speech in which he laments what he called a “crisis of confidence” in America.

1985: A visibly gaunt Rock Hudson appears at a news conference with actress Doris Day (it was later revealed Hudson was suffering from AIDS).

1992: Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton is nominated for president at the Democratic national convention in New York.

1997: Fashion designer Gianni Versace, 50, is shot dead outside his Miami Beach home; suspected gunman Andrew Phillip Cunanan, 27, would be found dead eight days later, a suicide. (Investigators believed Cunanan killed four other people before Versace in a cross-country spree that began the previous March.)

2002: John Walker Lindh, an American who’d fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan, pleads guilty in federal court in Alexandria, Va., to two felonies in a deal sparing him life in prison.

2010: After 85 days, BP stops the flow of oil from a blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico using a 75-ton cap lowered onto the wellhead earlier in the week.

2013: Two days after a Florida jury acquitted George Zimmerman in the death of Trayvon Martin, Attorney General Eric Holder calls the killing a “tragic, unnecessary shooting,” and says the Justice Department would follow “the facts and the law” as it reviews evidence to see whether federal criminal charges are warranted. (Federal authorities have yet to reach a decision in the case.)

VINDICATOR FILES

1993: Ralph “Boots” Bell, legendary Mahoning Valley disc jockey who interviewed the Beatles and hosted dances for a generation at Idora Park, dies at the age of 60 at his Garden Village apartment. Bell, who was the voice of advertising for the Trumbull County Fair, had attended the fair opening the day before he died.

Dr. Peter Kasvinsky of Bloomsburg (Pa.) University is named dean of Youngstown State University’s graduate school.

Gov. George Voinovich and Al Alli, shop chairman of United Auto Workers Local 1112 at the Lordstown General Motors plant, open a new Turnpike interchange at Ellsworth-Bailey Road. Michael Cubbin, general manager of the plant, says the new interchange will save 15 minutes and $1 per car leaving the plant.

1978: Developer Richard Mills rescinds his offer to buy 5,000 square feet of East End urban renewal land on which he planned to build a $3 million office building for IBM after city council balked at the proposed sale price of $3.75 per square foot.

Jimmy Mayle, 28, of Youngstown wins an argument in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that overturns the doctrine of sovereign immunity and will allow him to sue the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation for injuries received in a 1974 motorcycle accident in new Castle, Pa.

Gov. James A Rhodes clears the way for completion of the Albert Street Expressway by lending the city its share for the project, nearly $2 million.

1968: Members of New York Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller’s staff are arranging the governor’s visit to Youngstown. Attys. Carrol Matter and William Sullivan Jr. are local chairmen of Rockefeller’s campaign.

Five people are injured in a three-car accident in Route 46 at Western Reserve Road. Injured were Mrs. Carrie Hileman, Mark Hileman, Mrs. Rose Hamilton, William Webster and John Juhasz.

1943: Clearing the site for the new Mosquito Creek dam is started by workmen employed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Construction is expected to begin by Aug. 1.

Sharon’s chapter of the American Red Cross served thousands of solders at Camp Shenango during May and June. They assisted in arranging furloughs for 4,082 soldiers and loaned $27,401 for transportation.