Today in history

Today is Thursday, June 18, the 169th day of 2009. There are 196 days left in the year. On this date in 1940, during World War II, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill urges his countrymen to conduct themselves in a manner that would prompt future generations to say, “This was their finest hour.”

In 1812, the United States declares war against Britain. In 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte meets his Waterloo as British and Prussian troops defeat the French in Belgium. In 1873, suffragist Susan B. Anthony is found guilty by a judge in Canandaigua, N.Y., of breaking the law by casting a vote in the 1872 presidential election. (The judge fined Anthony $100, but she never paid the penalty.) In 1908, William Howard Taft is nominated for president by the Republican national convention in Chicago. In 1945, William Joyce, known as “Lord Haw-Haw,” is charged in London with high treason for his English-language wartime broadcasts on German radio. (He was hanged the following January.) In 1959, actress Ethel Barrymore dies in Los Angeles at age 79.

June 18, 1984: The Supreme Court rejects an appeal of James “Jack White” Licavoli, Cleveland crime boss, who was convicted in connection with the car-bombing death of a rival, Danny Greene.

Jordan Schildcrout, 14, of Youngstown, wins first place in individual performance category of the National History Day competition in the University of Maryland. He performed an eight-minute skit, “The Nazi, the Survivor and the Rabbi.”

Bishop James W. Malone tells Youngstown State University graduates that nuclear disarmament and world hunger are “overriding issues that cry out for our involvement.”

June 18, 1969: Former Ohio Congressman David Dennison Jr. of Warren emerges as a strong, but silent, contender for appointment as St. Lawrence Seaway administrator.

A 49-year-old Youngstown burglar is convicted in U.S. District Court in Elkins, W. Va., of transporting stolen cigarettes valued at $75,000 from Sharon, Pa.

A Boardman policeman is knocked unconscious while trying to quell a disturbance by about 20 juveniles at the Red Barn on Boardman-Canfield Road. Lee Tracy is released after treatment at South Side; a 17-year-old Boardman youth is arrested.

June 18, 1959: Warren Municipal Court Judge James A. Ravella reduces an assault with intent to kill charge against Trumbull County rackets boss Mike Farah to assault and battery and releases Farah after fining him $200. The charge was filed by Jean Blair, chairman of the Trumbull County Republican Party.

Youngstown City Council authorizes the sale of $10 million in bonds to finance the Poland Avenue sewage treatment plant, the largest single improvement project in city history.

Six-year-old Rita Aaron is recovering in South Side Hospital after she was accidentally hanged on a clothes line in the backyard of her Ridge Avenue home. A neighbor, Elouise Atkins, saw the girl entangled in the rope and called for her husband, Kenneth, who got Rita down and applied respiration. Doctors at the hospital packed her in ice to slow her metabolism and prevent brain injury.

The Department of Laboratories of the Youngstown Hospital Association receives a $14,000 grant from the Hartford Foundation of New York for continuation of cancer research focused on different pigments in the blood.

June 18, 1934: A concentrated drive against Youngstown bootleggers, the first since enactment of new liquor legislation, opens as a squad of state agents and city police raid 35 bootleggers who made liquor sales over the last week to undercover agents.

A Youngstown gangster, “Sandy” Naples, is sentenced to 10 to 20 years in the Western Pennsylvania Penitentiary after being found guilty of robbing and assaulting a Beaver Township farmer.

Lily Mae Mixon, 20, is being held in the shooting death of Willie White, 24, a football and basketball star at Struthers High a few years ago who had spurned the girl.

Coming to Meyers Lake Park in Canton, Cab Calloway and his Cotton Club Orchestra, 75 cents advance sale, $1 at the box office.