Today is Wednesday, Jan. 28, the 28th day of 2009. There are 337 days left in the year. On this date

Today is Wednesday, Jan. 28, the 28th day of 2009. There are 337 days left in the year. On this date in 1986, the space shuttle Challenger explodes 73 seconds after liftoff from Cape Canaveral, Fla., killing all seven of its crew members: flight commander Francis R. “Dick” Scobee; pilot Michael Smith; Ronald McNair; Ellison Onizuka; Judith Resnik; Gregory Jarvis; and schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe.

In 1878, the first daily college newspaper, Yale News (now Yale Daily News), begins publication in New Haven, Conn. In 1909, the United States withdraws its forces from Cuba as Jose Miguel Gomez becomes president. In 1915, the United States Coast Guard is created as President Woodrow Wilson signs a bill merging the Life-Saving Service and Revenue Cutter Service. In 1916, Louis D. Brandeis is nominated by President Woodrow Wilson to the Supreme Court; Brandeis becomes the court’s first Jewish member. In 1945, during World War II, Allied supplies begin reaching China over the newly reopened Burma Road.

January 28, 1984: Nick Julian returns to his Youngstown home only 27 days after undergoing a heart transplant at Presbyterian University Hospital in Pittsburgh.

Organized crime’s grip on Youngstown will grow stronger unless everyone — police, politicians, the press and the citizenry — admits the city is in trouble, says Atty. James B. Callen, one of the founders of the Citizens League of Greater Youngstown. Callen testified at a Senate subcommittee hearing on the mob’s influence in Youngstown.

Megastar Michael Jackson is hospitalized with severe scalp burns after dancing around with his hair on fire while filming a TV commercial.

January 28, 1969: The General Fireproofing Co. omits a quarterly dividend on common stock for the first time in 34 years due to a loss in the fourth quarter of 1968.

Youngstown State University expects to be on the air by summer with its own noncommercial FM radio station.

Sgt. Thomas Bubanich is the new commander of the Ohio Highway Patrol’s Canfield Post.

January 28, 1959: Robert L. Kunzig, chairman of the U.S. Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, tells the Mahoning Valley McKinley Club that “Republicans need to stop killing each other and begin to fight Democrats.”

The state highway department makes its first land purchase along the path of the city’s arterial highway.

Boardman Township’s $48,000 No. 3 fire station at Lockwood Blvd. And Shields Road is nearing completion.

January 28, 1934: Fully aware of rotten spots in the 11,376-man CWA organization in Mahoning County, Relief Director R.A. Noble begins to wield his knife, laying off 211 workers.

Strict federal regulation of the nation’s stock exchanges through a license system and a federal administrator is proposed by President Roosevelt’s interdepartmental committee.

Salaries and wages paid to Mahoning County officials and employees in 1932 totaled $854,289, or $3.61 per capita. That makes Mahoning County the third most expensive county to operate in the state.