YEARS AGO FOR SEPT. 1

Today is Saturday, Sept. 1, the 244th day of 2018. There are 121 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1894: The Great Hinckley Fire destroys Hinckley, Minn., and five other communities and kills more than 400 people.

1923: The Japanese cities of Tokyo and Yokohama are devastated by an earthquake that claimed some 140,000 lives.

1939: World War II begins as Nazi Germany invades Poland.

1945: Americans receive word of Japan’s formal surrender that ended World War II.

1985: A U.S.-French expedition locates the wreckage of the Titanic on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean roughly 400 miles off Newfoundland.

2004: More than 1,000 people are taken hostage by heavily armed Chechen militants at a school in Beslan in southern Russia; more than 330 people, more than half of them children, are killed in the three-day ordeal.

2008: Republicans open their national convention in St. Paul, Minn., on a subdued note because of Hurricane Gustav; John McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, reveals that her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant.

VINDICATOR FILES

1993: Twenty-seven prisoners in the Youngstown City Jail are released and 33 others are transferred to the Mahoning County Jail as part of the closing of the city lock-up.

The 1994 Defense Department authorization bill that will be voted on by Congress could lead to the reassignment eight C-130 aircraft now assigned to the 910th Tactical Airlift Group at the Youngstown Air Reserve Station.

Charges including attempted murder are filed against three young Warren men arrested in the brutal beating and robbery of Theodore and Cathryn Emerson in their Jefferson Street SW home.

1978: Gregg Moff of Canfield and Kimberly Phipps of Austintown are crowned king and queen of the 132nd Canfield Fair.

Struthers Mayor Anthony S. Centofanti confirms that the FBI has been asked to investigate the practices of Telesonic Associates Inc. and Telesonic of Ohio in the operation of the Struthers cable-television system.

Eleven lettermen will lead Ursuline in its opener against South at Rayen Stadium: Jim Miller, Neal Frost, Roger DiFrangia, John Kernan, Mike Davanzo, Paul Rella, Mark Brahney, Wally Angelo, Tony Viglio, Casey Moore and Don Komara.

1968: The Hubbard Board of Education and Hubbard Federation of Teachers sign a two-year contract that will increase the starting salary of teachers by $500 annually, raising starting income to $6,000.

Sunny skies and warm weather boost the annual observance of Pennsylvania Day at the Canfield Fair, with 85,000 in attendance.

1943:Capt. George J. McMillin, a graduate of Rayen School and Annapolis and the former governor of Guam, is alive and “working” in a prison camp on Taiwan in the Formosa Islands, his brother Paul of Youngstown reports. The family received a Red Cross post card from McMillin, who was captured by the Japanese when Guam fell.

Six soldiers, five of them Youngstown district men, escape injury when their Rendova Island foxhole is hit by a bomb. They are Sgt. Ray Smith, Sgt Balise Rounds, Cpl. George Rishel, PFC Adam Pierce and Pvt. Paul Zumpft.

Pauline Rugh, a graduate of Penn State University, is receiving tutelage from Penn State Coach Bob Higgins after being named football coach of Bell Township (Pa.) High School. She took the job rather than see the sport be abolished at her school for lack of a coach.