Today in history

Today is Saturday, April 4, the 94th day of 2009. There are 271 days left in the year. On this date in 1968, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., 39, is shot to death at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn. (James Earl Ray later pleads guilty to assassinating King, then spends the rest of his life claiming his innocence before dying in prison in 1998.)

In 1818, Congress decides the United States flag would consist of 13 red and white stripes and 20 stars, with a new star to be added for every new state of the Union. In 1841, President William Henry Harrison succumbs to pneumonia one month after his inaugural, becoming the first U.S. chief executive to die in office. In 1945, during World War II, U.S. troops on Okinawa encounter the first significant resistance from Japanese forces at the Machinato Line. In 1949, 12 nations, including the United States, sign the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington. In 1975, more than 130 people, most of them children, are killed when a U.S. Air Force transport plane evacuating Vietnamese orphans crash-lands shortly after take off from Saigon. In 1979, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the deposed prime minister of Pakistan, is hanged after he was convicted of conspiring to murder a political opponent. In 1983, the space shuttle Challenger roars into orbit on its maiden voyage.

April 4, 1984: Sgt. Howard Faison, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 141, alleges that more than $40,000 has been paid illegally to some members of Sheriff James A. Traficant’s staff for accumulated time or accrued time that wasn’t worked.

A helicopter is used to install a gilded dome atop Infant Jesus of Prague Church at 7754 South Avenue.

Unemployment drops from 13.6 to 12.5 percent in Mahoning County and from 12.6 to 11.9 percent in Trumbull County between January and February. The national rate is 8.4 percent.

April 4, 1969: An open house is held at the new chapel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints at 2205 Tibbetts-Wick Road in Liberty.

The state gives its permission for purchase of 153 acres from the Standard Slag Co. farm on the west edge of Canfield for construction of a Mahoning County Joint Vocational School.

Youngstown police Chief John Terlesky assigns four teams of detectives to night patrol on shifts with flexible hours starting anytime after 6 p.m. and ending by 5 a.m.

April 4, 1959: David J. McDonald, president of the United Steelworkers Union, says there is little hope of his union gaining a four-day workweek or a six-hour work day in forthcoming contract negotiations with the basic steel industry.

Two representatives of the division of parks of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources visit Lake Milton with Youngstown Park Superintendent Ed Finamore. At various times, the question of the state taking over Lake Milton as a state park has been discussed.

Ohio Supreme Court Judge James Garfield Stewart of Cincinnati, who lived to see his son named a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States, dies at the age of 78 after collapsing during a luncheon in Louisville, Ky.

April 4, 1934: Gov. George White backs up the state relief commission and orders all relief work in Mahoning County stopped until county commissioners come up with their share, $156,000.

The 59th anniversary of one of the Youngstown district’s largest retail trade establishments, the Strouss-Hirshberg Co., is being celebrated. Scores of extra salespeople are called in to handle anticipated crowds.