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YEARS AGO FOR AUG. 8

Thursday, August 8, 2019

Today is Thursday, Aug. 8, the 220th day of 2019. There are 145 days left in the year.

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On this date in:

1815: Napoleon Bonaparte sets sail for St. Helena to spend the remainder of his days in exile.

1876: Thomas A. Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph.

1942: During World War II, six Nazi saboteurs who were captured after landing in the U.S. are executed in Washington, D.C.; two others who cooperated with authorities are spared.

1968: The Republican national convention in Miami Beach nominates Richard Nixon for president on the first ballot.

1974: President Richard Nixon, facing damaging new revelations in the Watergate scandal, announces he will resign the following day.

1993: In Somalia, four U.S. soldiers are killed when a land mine is detonated under their vehicle, prompting President Bill Clinton to order Army Rangers to try to capture Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid.

2002: Saddam Hussein organizes a big military parade and then warns “the forces of evil” not to attack Iraq as he seeks once more to shift the debate away from world demands that he live up to agreements that ended the Gulf War.

2003: The Boston Roman Catholic archdiocese offers $55 million to settle more than 500 lawsuits stemming from alleged sex abuse by priests

2014: The U.S. unleashes its first airstrikes against the Islamic State group in northern Iraq amid a worsening humanitarian crisis.

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1994: Youngstown State University President Leslie Cochran wants to boost on-campus living, nearly double international enrollment and create partnerships with colleges in foreign countries as part of a blueprint for the 21st century.

Canfield Fair Board President Don Booth remembers the day in 1939 when he was 9 years old and drove the family’s outboard boat through heavy waves at Lake Milton to save four men whose boat had capsized. Among those saved were the boat’s owner, O.E. Resch, and John Odomai and Lawrence Heeter. Dr. Stephen Cholar, a chiropractor, drowned.

Dozens of fireworks manufacturers and thousands of hobbyists gather near Enon Valley, Pa., for the 25th annual convention of the Pyrotechnic Guild International.

1979: William G. Jones, 22, an employee of Youngstown Steel Tank Co., is found shot to death in the front seat of his car parked at the dead-end of East Evergreen Avenue near South Park Drive.

A fire deliberately set on the ninth floor of the Hotel Ohio causes the evacuation of 24 of the 150 elderly tenants who live there.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol provides a security escort for a truck containing nuclear waste from the accident at the Three Mile Island power plant as the truck passed through the Mahoning Valley en route to a disposal site in Hanford, Wash.

1969: The Mahoning County Joint Vocational School Board approves additions to the new school building that will increase the cost to $6.7 million but also will allow expanded programs

Four Akron men and one from Kent, all Black Muslims, are arrested on charges of attempted murder of an ex-Muslim member, William Evans, 34.

General Electric is awarded a $3 million government contract for light bulbs that will greatly benefit the Youngstown and Warren GE plants.

1944: A power failure at the Indianola substation left hundreds of stranded passenger lining downtown Youngstown streets waiting for trolley buses.

Jack Earle, a Texan who serves as a sales representative for a California wine producer, causes a stir on his arrival at the Pick Ohio Hotel. Earle is 8-foot-6-inches tall.

The Western Reserve Lumber Co. on Erie Street in Niles is destroyed by fire. The loss is estimated at $40,000.