YEARS AGO FOR AUG. 27

Today is Tuesday, Aug. 27, the 239th day of 2019. There are 126 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1776: The Battle of Long Island begins during the Revolutionary War as British troops attack American forces who end up retreating two days later.

1859: Edwin L. Drake drills the first successful oil well in the United States, at Titusville, Pa.

1928: The Kellogg-Briand Pact is signed in Paris, outlawing war and providing for the peaceful settlement of disputes.

1949: A violent white mob prevents an outdoor concert headlined by Paul Robeson from taking place near Peekskill, N.Y.

1963: Author, journalist and civil-rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois dies in Accra, Ghana, at age 95.

1967: Brian Epstein, manager of the Beatles, is found dead in his London flat from an accidental overdose of sleeping pills; he was 32.

2005: Coastal residents jam freeways and gas stations as they rush to get out of the way of Hurricane Katrina, which is headed toward New Orleans.

2006: A Comair CRJ-100 crashes after trying to take off from the wrong runway in Lexington, Ky., killing 49 people and leaving the co-pilot the sole survivor.

2008: Barack Obama is nominated for president by the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

2009: Mourners file past the closed casket of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.

VINDICATOR FILES

1994: Boardman police say thieves have been tuning into car stereos as their prime target, with between five and 10 cars being entered each night.

Packard Electric general manager and Youngstown State University alumnus Rudy Schlais urges about 400 YSU summer graduates to value the importance of continuing education.

George Kovach, 55, of Newton Falls claims the second half of a $30 million Super Lotto jackpot from the Aug. 17 Ohio drawing. He took a lump sum of $4.6 million and declined to participate in a press conference.

1979: Nearly half of Trumbull County’s school districts employ more staff per student than the statewide average and a third of the districts pay higher salaries than average, according to a report by the state auditor’s office.

The Youngstown Steel Door Co., loaded with orders for railroad car sides, sets up a temporary quality control shop in the former Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. hot strip mill in Campbell.

Organs are stolen from two Youngstown churches sometime between Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. The instruments were taken from Mount Sinai Baptist Church of South Forest Avenue and Phillips Chapel on Jefferson Street.

1969: Army Pfc. Robert A. Jones of Girard is reported killed in combat in South Vietnam.

Hot lunches will be available for the first time for every student in the Youngstown City School District.

Search parties find the bodies of Nicholas Parish, 48, of Youngstown, president of Southern Airways, and a student pilot, Joseph Sudol, 33, of McDonald, in the wreckage of Parish’s plane near Hitchcock Road.

1944: Pvt. Michael Koken, 35, a football star under Busty Ashbaugh at Youngstown South High and Knute Rockne at Notre Dame, is reported seriously wounded during a battle in France.

M.L. Bricker, who was born in Youngstown and trained here as a machinist before being hired by Ford Motor Co., is named general superintendent of Ford’s giant Willow Run Liberator bomber plant.

Four area men are reported killed in action: Pvt. Frank Ondray, 20, of Struthers; Sgt. Edward J. Panasewicz, 29, of Pulaski, Pa.; S/Sgt. Frank J. DeMarco of Warren, and Pvt. William A. Ross, 28, of Warren.