YEARS AGO FOR AUG. 17

Today is Saturday, Aug. 17, the 229th day of 2019. There are 136 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1863: Federal batteries and ships begin bombarding Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor during the Civil War, but the Confederates manage to hold on despite several days of pounding.

1915: A mob in Cobb County, Ga., lynches Jewish businessman Leo Frank, 31, whose death sentence for the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan had been commuted to life imprisonment.

1969: Hurricane Camille slams into the Mississippi coast as a Category 5 storm that would be blamed for 256 U.S. deaths, three in Cuba.

1982: The first commercially produced compact discs, a recording of ABBA’s “The Visitors,” are pressed at a Philips factory near Hanover, West Germany.

1987: Rudolf Hess, the last member of Adolf Hitler’s inner circle, dies at Spandau Prison at 93, an apparent suicide.

1996: The Reform Party selects Ross Perot to be its first-ever presidential nominee.

1998: President Bill Clinton gives grand jury testimony via closed-circuit TV from the White House concerning his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

2017: A van plows through pedestrians along a packed promenade in the Spanish city of Barcelona, killing 13 people and injuring 120. (A 14th victim died later from injuries.)

VINDICATOR FILES

1994: A Girard couple, Paul and Angeline Paronish, lose their legal fight to adopt 4-year-old twins to whom they had been foster parents for three years. Adoption of the twins by a Canton couple is finalized by Stark County Probate Court and a federal judge dismisses their suit claiming discrimination.

Girard Municipal Court Judge Michael A. Bernard dismisses a charge of obstructing a police investigation against Paul Pollis, ruling that Pollis can’t be compelled to testify against himself as part of the police investigation into the disappearance of Charlotte Nagy Pollis, 28, on March 12.

In the two years since open enrollment began, Lowellville’s enrollment has ballooned from 450 to 650, with almost all of the transfer students coming from the Youngstown City School District.

1979: A proposed HUD project for low- and moderate-income housing in Washingtonville is opposed by a count of 22-9 of people attending a public hearing.

The Richley Administration receives City Council approval to file for a $1.15 million Urban Development Action Grant so that the J.V. McNicholas Transportation Co. can move its operations from West Federal Street to the city’s northwest side.

Melvin Bay Guyon, 19, who was sought for a week by the FBI for killing Special Agent Johnnie Oliver in Cleveland, is arrested at South Side Hospital, where he had sought treatment for a gunshot wound.

1969: Leah DeSantis, 16, of Hubbard is crowned Miss Ohio Teenager in Sandusky. Three other area girls were runners-up: Patty Hoover of Austintown, Gail Hovanic of Canfield and Jeanie Yourchisin of Brookfield.

The Cancer Society is training volunteers to make bedside visits to breast cancer patients.

Ellwood City, Pa., will rename the Ewing Park High School Stadium to honor Dr. Henry E. Helling, 85, who has practiced medicine in Ellwood City for 60 years and has delivered 7,000 babies.

Work is progressing on the Youngstown Municipal Airport’s $605,000 control tower.

1944: Mahoning Common Pleas Court Judge Erskine Maiden rules invalid a new city jukebox fee of $10 a year for each machine and $1 for each wall unit.

Pvt. Paul Ratay, missing since the fall of Bataan, is declared killed in action by the War Department. His father, John, had waited two years for word of his fate.

George Burns and Gracie Allen are back on the air every Tuesday night at 9 on WKBN