YEARS AGO FOR OCT. 4

Today is Thursday, Oct. 4, the 277th day of 2018. There are 88 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1777: Gen. George Washington’s troops launch an assault on the British at Germantown, Pa., resulting in heavy American casualties.

1940: Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini confer at Brenner Pass in the Alps.

1957: Jimmy Hoffa is elected president of the Teamsters Union.

1957: The Space Age begins as the Soviet Union launches Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, into orbit.

1970: Rock singer Janis Joplin, 27, is found dead in her Hollywood hotel room.

2002: In a federal court in Boston, a laughing Richard Reid pleads guilty to trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with explosives in his shoes (the British citizen later was sentenced to life in prison).

2017: President Donald Trump visits hospital bedsides and a police base in Las Vegas in the aftermath of the shooting rampage three nights earlier that left 58 people dead.

VINDICATOR FILES

1993: Youngstown detectives are piecing together the city’s worst massacre on record: Ezra “Luke” Huffman III, 33, took his own life after shooting to death Irene Williams, 30; two of their children, Monica Huffman, 3, and Nazareth Huffman, 5, and Mrs. Huffman’s boyfriend, Robert Furey, 35, all at 319 W. Scott St. Another son, 6, is in serious condition in Akron Children’s Hospital. An 18-month old daughter was spared.

The 11th District Court of Appeals rules that 40 guns should not have been confiscated from Lawrence Russell, 48, of Hubbard after he was charged with drug trafficking. The court overturned a ruling by Trumbull County Common Pleas Judge Mitchell Shaker, because, the court said, it hadn’t been proven that the guns were bought with drug money.

The final baseball game at Cleveland Stadium draws 72,390 fans, who see the Cleveland Indians lose, 4-0, to the Chicago White Sox. The weekend series drew 216,904, the largest number for a three-game set in baseball history.

1978: The Main Library will remain closed for at least a week as debris from a fire is cleaned up and books and files are aired out to dry.

Trumbull County Commissioner Lyle Williams says he will resubmit to the Miller Brewing Co. a proposal for the company to choose Trumbull County as the site of a proposed Northeast Ohio brewery.

Judge Joseph Donofrio of the Seventh District Court of Appeals will be the main speaker for the dinner dance marking the 30th anniversary of Father Joseph Gallagher Council 3144, Knights of Columbus.

1968: The Most Rev. James W. Malone, bishop of Youngstown returns from a 40-day trip abroad to attend the second round of dialogue between Catholics and the World Methodist Council and to visit the Vatican. He says ecumenism is an exercise in patience.

General Motors Corp. will introduce an American-made small car in the summer of 1970, assembling it at the huge Lordstown plant.

The Rev. Clement Humbard, pastor of Calvary Temple in Austintown, asks the Ohio Criminal Activities Unit of the attorney general’s office to investigate bomb threats against the church and his Barrington Drive home.

Youngstown police will file felony charges against any person, regardless of age, who throws any kind of missile at cars, people or homes.

1943: Edwin D. Haseltine, 85, of 212 Broadway, former 1stWard councilman and a civil engineer and surveyor for 60 years, dies in South Side Hospital where he had been awaiting surgery since Sept. 25.

Tech. Sgt. Theodore Edwards, holder of the Distinguished Flying Cross, has been awarded the Oak Leaf Cluster to the Air Medal for meritorious service while on a bombing mission over Shortland Harbor.