Today is Thursday, April 17, the 108th day of 2008. There are 258 days left in the year. On this

Today is Thursday, April 17, the 108th day of 2008. There are 258 days left in the year. On this date in 1961, about 1,500 CIA-trained Cuban exiles launch the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in a failed attempt to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro.

In 1521, Martin Luther goes before the Diet of Worms to face charges stemming from his religious writings. (He is later declared an outlaw by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.) In 1524, Giovanni da Verrazano reaches present-day New York Harbor. In 1790, American statesman Benjamin Franklin dies in Philadelphia at age 84. In 1861, the Virginia State Convention votes to secede from the Union.

April 17, 1983: The Youngstown-Warren area ranks second only to Cleveland in northeast Ohio in the number of fraudulent theft claims by car owners.

David Miller, president of the Youngstown Revitalization Foundation, says city planners welcome an offer by the Edward J. DeBartolo Corp. and the Cafaro Corp. to aid in a marketing analysis and feasibility study for the downtown area.

The U.S. Information Agency, headed by a former show business pal of President Reagan, has give more than 150 high salary jobs and plum overseas posts to children and friends of top administration officials. A former employee says it is “the most craven display of nepotism that I have ever heard of in a federal agency.”

April 17, 1968: Officials of Ling-Temco-Vought, the big Texas-based conglomerate, have approached Youngstown Sheet Tube Co. management, but Sheet Tube officials say they have no interest in a merger.

Dr. John J. Coffelt, vice president for research and planning for the Oklahoma State Regents, is named vice president of administrative affairs at Youngstown State University.

McCullough Williams Jr. is elected chairman of the Citizens Discipline Practices Committee of the Youngstown public schools.

April 17, 1958: Rayen School students continue to attend classes through the afternoon while city police search the building after a young male called and said there was a bomb in the school. Authorities and police agreed that the call was likely a prank; nothing was found.

Ford H. Canfield, 89, of 134 Callahan Road, former Mahoning County clerk of courts and a distant relative of the founder of Canfield Village, dies in the Hamstead Nursing Home.

The Youngstown Board of Control awards a contract for $31,329 to L.F. Donnell Inc. for 14 cars and two station wagons for the Youngstown Police Department. The city will also purchase a new pumper truck for the fire department from the Seagrave Corp. in Columbus for $18,974.

April 17, 1933: Hundreds of spectators attending the trial of Cyrus H. Neff, charged with murdering his wife, are cleared from the courtroom at noon as Judge George H. Gessner deliberates a defense motion that only principals in the case be admitted for the afternoon session, when Neff is due to take the stand and tell the story of his wife’s death in their Canfield home.

Youngstown Utilities Engineer E.E. Ingersoll says that a surprising total of 1,020 Sunday streetcar and bus passes are sold the first day they go on sale. The 25-cent Sunday pass allows an adult and two children to ride anywhere, all day.