Today is Friday, April 2, the 93rd day of 2004. There are 273 days left in the year. On this date in

Today is Friday, April 2, the 93rd day of 2004. There are 273 days left in the year. On this date in 1917, President Wilson asks Congress to declare war against Germany, saying, "The world must be made safe for democracy."
In 1513, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon lands in Florida. In 1792, Congress passes the Coinage Act, which authorizes establishment of the U.S. Mint. In 1805, storyteller Hans Christian Andersen is born in Odense, Denmark. In 1860, the first Italian Parliament meets at Turin. In 1865, Confederate President Davis and most of his Cabinet flee the Confederate capital of Richmond, Va. In 1872, Samuel F.B. Morse, developer of the electric telegraph, dies in New York. In 1932, aviator Charles A. Lindbergh and Dr. John F. Condon turn over $50,000 in ransom to an unidentified man in a New York City cemetery in exchange for Lindbergh's kidnapped son. (The child, however, is not returned, and is found dead the following month.) In 1974, French president Georges Pompidou dies in Paris. In 1982, several thousand troops from Argentina seize the disputed Falkland Islands, located in the south Atlantic, from Britain. (Britain seizes the islands back the following June.)
April 2, 1979: Truckers working for 27 freight and steel haulers in the Youngstown District are picketing their employers as part of a selective nationwide strike called by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Anthony D. Liberatore of Cleveland, who had been on the run for more than a year after being linked to the bombing death of Cleveland racketeer Daniel Green, is arrested by the FBI in a Cleveland suburb.
The Supreme Court rules 6-3 that the government cannot require cable television operators to set aside channels for public access.
April 2, 1964: The safety of 40 of the 53 Youngstown area people known to be in Alaska when the earthquake hit has been confirmed by local Red Cross officials.
The Mahoning Valley Sanitary District notifies Youngstown that it will seek a rate increase of $3.70 per million gallons of water. Chief engineer Donald Heffelfinger says two years of drought have required the district to use additional chemicals in treating the water.
John W. Price, former general superintendent of the U.S. Steel Corp.'s Homestead, Pa., works, is elected president and a director of Reactive Metals Inc., a new company that will be based in Niles.
April 2, 1954: President Eisenhower signs a bill to establish an Air Force Academy and appropriating $126 million toward that end.
The Citizens Committee for Decency cautiously accepts an invitation from a distributor of pocket-size books in Youngstown to discuss a plan to screen new books for obscenity, even though several committee members are cool to the proposal.
Twenty-nine Mahoning County deputy sheriffs and six policemen from Struthers and Campbell receive diplomas from an FBI law enforcement officers training school at the Mahoning County Courthouse.
April 2, 1929: C.W. Deibel returns to Youngstown from Florida and announces that he has resigned as manager of the Liberty Theater and will build a $1.5 million theater and office building in downtown Youngstown, in partnership with Robert Graham, a prominent Wall Street figure.
Youngstown City Council is seriously considering the construction of a bridge from Marshall Street across the Mahoning River and Pennsylvania Railroad, to connect with Chestnut Street at Front Street.
The rising stock markets of 1928, which caused the Federal Reserve Board a great deal of concern, are credited by the Treasury Department with an unexpected increase of $80 million in March income tax returns over the same period a year earlier.