Today is Thursday, Jan. 19, the 19th day of 2006. There are 346 days left in the year. On this date

Today is Thursday, Jan. 19, the 19th day of 2006. There are 346 days left in the year. On this date in 1966, Indira Gandhi is elected prime minister of India.
In 1736, James Watt, inventor of the steam engine, is born in Scotland. In 1807, Robert E. Lee, the commander-in-chief of the Confederate armies, is born in Stratford, Va. In 1809, author Edgar Allan Poe is born in Boston. In 1853, Giuseppe Verdi's opera "Il Trovatore" premieres in Rome. In 1861, Georgia secedes from the Union. In 1937, millionaire Howard Hughes sets a transcontinental air record by flying his monoplane from Los Angeles to Newark, N.J., in seven hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds. In 1944, the federal government relinquishes control of the nation's railroads following settlement of a wage dispute. In 1955, a presidential news conference is filmed for television for the first time, with the permission of President Eisenhower. In 1970, President Nixon nominates G. Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court; however, the nomination is defeated because of controversy over Carswell's past racial views. In 1981, the United States and Iran sign an agreement paving the way for the release of 52 Americans held hostage for more than 14 months.
January 19, 1981: In the largest Clean Air Act settlement ever by a utility, Ohio Edison Co. agrees to spend $500 million on pollution control at 10 Ohio power plants, including those in Niles and East Palestine.
Mahoning National Bank Co. adds $1.25 million to the $1.5 million pledged by Dollar Savings & amp; Trust Co. toward $10 million in mortgages needed for the Commuter Aircraft Corp. plant at Youngstown Municipal Airport.
Richard E. McGuire, president of United Steel Workers Local 7300, is elected president of the Greater Youngstown AFL-CIO Council, replacing Russell Baxter as the council's chief executive.
January 19, 1966: A 15-year-old Slippery Rock, Pa., boy jailed in Whitehall, Wisc., for a minor traffic accident, blurts out that he had killed his parents. The body of Henry Anderson was found outside the family's burned out farmhouse; that of Dorothy Anderson was found inside.
Army Spec. 5 David L. Jackson of Howland is killed in Vietnam, the third Trumbull County man to die in the war.
Better trained policemen will be necessary to cope with the growing demand for individual rights, the Rev. Carl Breitfeller, former chaplain in Washington, D.C., federal prisons, tells the Youngstown Area Crime Clinic.
January 19, 1956: The U.S. Air Force is asking Congress for $2.2 million in the 1957 budget to expand the jet fighter base at the Youngstown Municipal Airport.
In a surprise move, the Mahoning County commissioners grant 10 percent wage increases to nearly 50 employees, most of them custodian under their jurisdiction.
The Strouss-Hirshberg Co., owned by May Department Stores Co., will construct a substantial addition to its present warehouse in Edgewood St.
January 19, 1931: State and Trumbull County authorities are probing a fire that destroyed a well-known speakeasy, The Night Owl, near Masury and the attempted bombing of another place nearby.
Armed conflict between capitalism and Russian Communism is inevitable unless one side or the other is Christianized, says Dr. Ralph S. Cushman of Rochester, N.Y., in an address to Ohio pastors meeting in a four-day convention in Columbus. He says Communism is godless, but capitalism does not yet reflect "Jesus' law of love and brotherhood as it applies to property and income."
A 1,000-foot section of the crest of the American Falls between Goat Island and the American shore collapses in a mighty roar, giving a new profile to Niagara Falls.