Today is Monday, Feb. 18, the 49th day of 2008. There are 317 days left in the year. This is

Today is Monday, Feb. 18, the 49th day of 2008. There are 317 days left in the year. This is Presidents Day. On this date in 1885, Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is published in the U.S. for the first time.

In 1546, Martin Luther, leader of the Protestant Reformation in Germany, dies in Eisleben. In 1564, artist Michelangelo dies in Rome. In 1861, Jefferson Davis is sworn in as the provisional president of the Confederate States of America in Montgomery, Ala. In 1930, photographic evidence of Pluto (now designated a “dwarf planet”) is discovered by Clyde W. Tombaugh at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz. In 1960, the eighth Winter Olympic Games are formally opened in Squaw Valley, Calif., by Vice President Nixon. In 1967, American theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer dies in Princeton, N.J., at age 62. In 1970, the “Chicago Seven” defendants are found innocent of conspiring to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic national convention; five are convicted of violating the Anti-Riot Act of 1968. (Those convictions are later reversed). In 1977, the space shuttle Enterprise, sitting atop a Boeing 747, goes on its maiden “flight” above the Mojave Desert. In 1988, Anthony M. Kennedy is sworn in as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2001, auto racing star Dale Earnhardt Sr. dies from injuries suffered in a crash at the Daytona 500; he was 49.

February 18, 1983: Acting Mahoning County Sheriff Phil Chance says he won’t decide what to do about signing foreclosure deeds until he talks to Sheriff James A. Traficant Jr., who was jailed for contempt of court for refusing to sign the deeds.

Youngstown’s three hospitals are urging the public to curtail visits to patients in the face of a flu-like epidemic.

The Mahoning County Mental Health Board allocates $2,000 to Help Hotline Inc. for suicide prevention for Youngstown area high schools.

February 18, 1968: Cardinal Mooney High School tops 12 district high schools in qualifying its debate team and seven individual events speakers for the Ohio State High School Speech League Tournament to be held in Columbus.

The basic U.S. steel industry is firing the opening guns in Ohio in a national battle to combat what steelmakers say is one of the nation’s most serious economic problems, the rising tide of imported steel. A public relations effort that includes exhibits explaining the danger will be set up at several sites in Youngstown, and later at other cities throughout the state and nation.

Army Capt. Carl Nunziato of Youngstown is one of a group of injured soldiers being given red carpet treatment by the city of Baltimore. Capt. Nunziato, a graduate of Youngstown State University, has been a patient at Walter Reed Hospital for a year after being wounded in Vietnam and is learning to use his two artificial legs.

February 18, 1958: The loss is estimated at $100,000 in a fire that sweeps through the landmark home of Atty. Franklin B. Powers on Main Street in Poland.

Mahoning County Prosecutor Thomas Beil and four investigators are reported “out of town,” presumably on the trail of 6th Ward Councilman John Tobin and his business partner, Paul E. Shade, who are wanted for questioning in a massive insurance fraud.

Schools, industry and the general public are reeling from the effects of record low temperatures throughout the Youngstown area. Mrs. Mary P. Nagy, 62,  is found dead in her bed in an unheated house on Darr Avenue, Farrell, Pa.

February 18, 1933: Mrs. Joseph Gill, a Miami society woman who was among five people wounded in an attempt on the life of President-elect Franklin Roosevelt, is a  friend and club associate of Mr. and Mrs. Fred Tod of 278 Broadway, Youngstown. The Youngstown couple spend part of each winter in Florida.

The case of Royal H. Stilltoe, Trumbull County surveyor, is attracting attention of medical men after he held a temperature of 107.9 degrees for more than an hour in City Hospital in Warren. He remains in critical condition with pneumonia, although his temperature has dropped to 105 degrees.

Two men were badly burned, two others escaped injury and police are searching for the body of a fifth man who may have been burned to death when fire destroyed a 25-room building at Spearman Avenue and Broadway in Farrell.