YEARS AGO FOR AUG. 23

Today is Friday, Aug. 23, the 235th day of 2019. There are 130 days left in the year.

Associated Press

On this date in:

1775: Britain’s King George III proclaims the American colonies to be in a state of “open and avowed rebellion.”

1913: Copenhagen’s Little Mermaid statue, inspired by the Hans Christian Andersen story, is unveiled in the harbor of the Danish capital.

1914: Japan declares war against Germany in World War I.

1927: Amid worldwide protests, Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are executed in Boston for the murders of two men during a 1920 robbery.

1939: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agree to a nonaggression treaty, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in Moscow.

1960: Broadway librettist Oscar Hammerstein II, 65, dies in Doylestown, Pa.

1999: The Dow Jones industrial average soars 199.15 to a record of 11,299.76.

2008: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama introduces his choice of running mate, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware.

2003: Former priest John Geoghan, the convicted child molester whose prosecution sparked the sex- abuse scandal that shook the Roman Catholic Church nationwide, dies after another inmate attacks him in a Massachusetts prison.

2018: The long-running rift between President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions explodes into a public smackdown, with Trump accusing Sessions of failing to take control of the Justice Department and Sessions responding that he “will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.”

VINDICATOR FILES

1994: Terry and Becky Hatcher Murray leave for Saudi Arabia, where they have been teaching for 13 years. They say that living in a conservative Muslim country means giving up many freedoms Americans take for granted, but something pulls them back each year.

Father William Loveless, pastor of St. Pius X Church in Warren, announces from the pulpit that choir director Steven Begert has been fired for being in a homosexual relationship. Begert said he wanted the public announcement because he wanted people to know he was fired for being gay, not for failure to do his job.

The Ohio Department of Transportation says that three new area bridges show abnormal wear and tear after just a year. The spans are on Norquest Boulevard, Shields Road and the Ohio Turnpike.

1979: Warren City Council and Bazetta Township officials are at an impasse over extending a water line to a long-awaited Kmart distribution center north of the city.

Trumbull County Sheriff Richard Jakmas says he will invoke the Ferguson Act to fire striking deputies.

General Motors Packard Electric Division and the International Union of Electrical Workers agree to extend their contract deadline past Sept. 14 in an effort to avoid a strike.

1969: Vandals stage an elaborate raid at the home of Henry Jahn, Lee Run Road, Poland, a fifth-grade teacher at Poland Union Elementary School. Firecrackers were scattered on the driveway before kerosene was poured over them and ignited.

Aldie Breault of Salem is named Perry Township’s first full-time constable.

Blue jeans with rivets, T-shirts, facial hair and extreme hair-dos are prohibited under a dress code adopted for Newton Falls schools.

1944: Mayor Ralph W. O’Neill orders the police department to quit fixing or voiding traffic tickets. Parking tickets receipts, which were $20,599 in 1937, dropped to $8,048 in 1943.

Youngstown Bishop James McFadden presides over a two-hour ceremony during which five women are welcomed into the Ursuline community. The bishop asks for prayers that more women may be called to the religious life so that more than 70 years of Ursuline service to the community will be continued.

Jeweler Harry Levinson offers Rolex watches at his shop at Federal and Phelps, $84.50 to $228.