YEARS AGO FOR AUG. 21

Today is Wednesday, Aug. 21, the 233rd day of 2019. There are 132 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1609: Galileo Galilei demonstrates his new telescope to a group of officials atop the Campanile in Venice.

1831: Nat Turner launches a violent slave rebellion in Virginia resulting in the deaths of at least 55 whites. (Turner was later executed.)

1863: Pro-Confederate raiders attack Lawrence, Kan., massacring the men and destroying the town’s buildings.

1911: Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” is stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris. (The painting was recovered two years later in Italy.)

1940: Exiled Communist revolutionary Leon Trotsky dies in a Mexican hospital from wounds inflicted by an assassin the day before.

1963: Martial law is declared in South Vietnam as police and army troops begin a violent crackdown on Buddhist anti-government protesters.

1983: The musical play “La Cage Aux Folles” opens on Broadway.

1993: In a serious setback for NASA, engineers lose contact with the Mars Observer spacecraft as it is about to reach the red planet on a $980 million mission.

2018: Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer, pleads guilty to campaign-finance violations and other charges.

VINDICATOR FILES

1994: The largest load ever transported over Pennsylvania highways, a 27-foot, 9-inch-thick glass “mirror blank,” will be trucked down Interstate 79 from Erie and across Routes 51 and 18 to Wampum.

Congress must pass a health-care bill soon or risk not getting meaningful reform before the system collapses, says state Rep. Robert F. Hagan.

As the Youngstown State University football team gets ready to defend its NCAA Division 1-AA national championship, Coach Jim Tressel says the team’s quiet leader will be center Chris Sammarone, a Chaney High graduate.

1979: For the first time, Lighthouse Christian School in Columbiana will offer classes from Kindergarten through 12th grade The school has 112 pupils enrolled and an additional 60 slots available.

The FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents are investigating the theft of 40 weapons, including M-16 rifles, submachine guns and 45-caliber pistols, from the Ohio National Guard armory in Stow.

The U.S. Department of Energy releases maximum allowable gasoline prices in Northeast Ohio, ranging from 92 cents a gallon for regular to $1.08 per gallon for premium.

1969: A 17-year-old Cleveland Street youth is given a permanent commitment to the Ohio Youth Commission for throwing a firebomb at an Oak Hill Avenue home. The bomb fell short of the home.

Held over for the third week at the Paramount: “Ben Hur,” winner of 11 Academy Awards.

A young Sharpsville, Pa., teacher and his infant daughter are killed, the mother seriously injured and a Kent man killed in a head-on crash at Orangeville-Kinsman Road and Route 88. Dead are Jack L. Layman, 25; Kimberly Sue Layman, 5 months, and Kermit Taylor, 59. Patricia Layman, 24, is in Greenville Hospital.

1944: About 60 tons of Youngstown’s garbage is being buried each day using the army landfill method along Mahoning Avenue, west of West Street.

Crafts made by children at 21 city playgrounds over the summer are on display in a window of the Stambaugh Thompson Co.

Irving L. “Bud” Mansell, make-up editor of The Vindicator, leaves for Princeton University’s Naval School of Indoctrination. He has been commissioned a lieutenant j.g. in the Navy.