YEARS AGO FOR JULY 24

Today is Tuesday, July 24, the 205th day of 2019. There are 160 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1858: Republican senatorial candidate Abraham Lincoln formally challenges Democrat Stephen A. Douglas to a series of political debates; the result would become seven face-to-face encounters.

1862: Martin Van Buren, the eighth president of the United States, and the first to have been born a U.S. citizen, dies at age 79.

1866: Tennessee becomes the first state to be readmitted to the Union after the Civil War.

1915: The SS Eastland, a passenger ship carrying more than 2,500 people, rolls onto its side while docked at the Clark Street Bridge on the Chicago River; an estimated 844 people die in the disaster.

1969: The Apollo 11 astronauts – two of whom had been the first men to set foot on the moon – splash down safely in the Pacific.

1974: The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rules that President Richard Nixon has to turn over subpoenaed White House tape recordings to the Watergate special prosecutor.

2002: Nine coal miners become trapped in a flooded tunnel of the Quecreek Mine in western Pennsylvania; the story would end happily 77 hours later with the rescue of all nine.

2017: In a speech to a national Boy Scout gathering in West Virginia, President Donald Trump rails against his enemies and promotes his political agenda, bringing an angry reaction from some parents and former Scouts from both parties.

VINDICATOR FILES

1994: Delfin Gibert says his EXAL Corp. picked the Youngstown area as the site of a new aluminum container manufacturing plant because the area has a low cost of living and is within reach of two-thirds of its markets.

A United Steelworkers of America official says the Caparo Group Ltd., a British company looking to buy the Sharon Steel Corp. plant, appears to be a company the union could work with.

Tony Mason, a Farrell native who coached at Brookfield and Niles before going on to coach the University of Cincinnati and University of Arizona football teams, dies at the age of 66 after collapsing at Hopkins Airport in Cleveland.

1979: Lawrence County Commissioner Frank Vitriol, who has often clashed with his two colleagues, moves his office from the Courthouse in New Castle to the County Home 3 miles away.

Testifying in the murder trial of Robert Parks, Dr. Leo DiBlasio calmly describes the violent killings of his wife, Patricia, and receptionist, Mary Muffley, outside his Girard office in 1977. Dr. DiBlasio was seriously wounded.

Playing at the Kenley Players in E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron: Ed Ames in Shenandoah. Tickets, $5 and $7.

1969: A spectacular two-alarm fire fueled by lavish furnishings sweeps through Cicero’s Restaurant causing $75,000 damage and injuring two firemen.

Youngstown police arrest a 37-year-old South Side man described as a major heroin dealer and a 28-year-old East Side woman who was his chief lieutenant.

The proposed Mahoning County welfare renewal levy to be placed on the November ballot may be 2.5 mills instead of the 2 originally asked at a public hearing.

1944: Lucius B. McKelvey, president of the G.M. McKelvey Co. since 1917, dies at North Side Hospital following a stroke. He had been ill for some time.

After more than 30 years of competition limited to its membership, the Trumbull Country Club hosts the season’s biggest event, the 18-hole finals of the Youngstown Area District Amateur Golf Association Championship.

Canfield Fair directors will offer $18,000 in premiums, the highest in the 98-year history of the event.