YEARS AGO FOR OCT. 7

Today is Sunday, Oct. 7, the 280th day of 2018. There are 85 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1777: The second Battle of Saratoga begins during the American Revolution. (British forces under General John Burgoyne surrender 10 days later.)

1858: The fifth debate between Illinois senatorial candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas takes place in Galesburg.

1916: In the most lopsided victory in college football history, Georgia Tech defeats Cumberland University 222-0 in Atlanta.

1949: The Republic of East Germany is formed.

1954: Marian Anderson becomes the first black singer hired by the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York.

1960: Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy and Republican opponent Richard Nixon hold their second televised debate, this one in Washington, D.C.

1979: Pope John Paul II concludes his week-long tour of the United States with a Mass on the Washington Mall.

1982: The Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice musical “Cats” opens on Broadway. (The show ended its original run on Sept. 10, 2000, after a then-record 7,485 performances.)

1985: Palestinian gunmen hijack the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean. (The hijackers kill Leon Klinghoffer, a Jewish-American tourist, before surrendering on Oct. 9.)

1989: Hungary’s Communist Party renounces Marxism in favor of democratic socialism during a party congress in Budapest.

1991: University of Oklahoma law professor Anita Hill publicly accuses Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of making sexually inappropriate comments when she worked for him; Thomas denies Hill’s allegations.

1992: Trade representatives of the United States, Canada and Mexico initial the North American Free Trade Agreement during a ceremony in San Antonio, Texas, in the presence of President George H.W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

1998: Matthew Shepard, a gay college student, is beaten and left tied to a wooden fencepost outside of Laramie, Wyo.; he died five days later. (Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney are serving life sentences for Shepard’s murder.)

2008: The misery worsens on Wall Street, as the Dow loses more than 500 points and all the major indexes slide more than 5 percent.

2013: A partial federal government shutdown lingers, rattling markets in the U.S. and overseas while a gridlocked Congress shows little or no urgency toward resolving the impasse.

VINDICATOR FILES

1993: Days after Cleveland Browns Coach Bill Belichick benched Quarterback Bernie Kosar for two straight games, Kosar signs a new 7-year, $27 million contract.

Theodore Emerson, 78, dies as the result of a severe beating he received when three attackers pushed their way into the Emerson home at 1444 Jefferson St. SW, Warren, on Aug. 30. His wife, Cathryn, 72, who was beaten and stabbed was hospitalized for nine days and has moved from the area.

Mahoning County Commissioner Thomas J. Carney, 59, announces that he will not seek re-election, ending a 25-year career in politics.

1978: Floyd Kalber, anchorman of NBC’s “Today Show” tells the Youngstown Downtown Kiwanis that courtroom attacks on freedom of the press are, by extension, attacks on the constitutional rights of the people.

The Sierra Club and the state of Pennsylvania are expected to oppose a consent decree that allows Republic Steel’s Warren plant to violate federal water-quality standards until 1983 provided that the company spends $70 to $80 million on anti-pollution equipment.

Directors of Sharon Steel Corp. authorize a third phase of the company’s capital-improvements program, $7.5 million for new and replacement equipment at its Farrell works.

1968: Boardman police believe they have broken a teenage burglary ring responsible for 17 burglaries in Mahoning County that netted five youths more than $500 in cash and $3,000 in jewelry and other loot.

Municipal Judge Joseph Donofrio sentences two North Side men to 30 days in county jail for fighting at Rayen Stadium.

The Most Rev. James Malone, bishop of Youngstown, dedicates the new St. Joseph Church in Austintown, saying the occasion should serve to remind parishioners of the principal functions of the church of Christ.

1943: Twenty Youngstown Area WAVE recruits are seen off by family and friends from Pennsylvania Station for New York City where they will undergo basic training at Hunter College.

The YMCA purchases the old Ohio Bell Telephone building on East Rayen Avenue to provide additional facilities and to relieve the overcrowded Central Branch on Champion Street.

Staff Sgt. Manley Hefner, 23, of Hubbard is reported wounded in action on Vella LaVella Island in the South Pacific. He is awarded the Purple Heart.