Years Ago

Today is Saturday, Nov. 7, the 311th day of 2009. There are 54 days left in the year. On this date in 1917, Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution takes place as forces led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin overthrow the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky.

In 1874, the Republican Party is symbolized as an elephant in a cartoon drawn by Thomas Nast in Harper’s Weekly. In 1893, the state of Colorado grants its women the right to vote. In 1916, Republican Jeannette Rankin of Montana becomes the first woman elected to Congress. In 1940, in Washington state, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, nicknamed “Galloping Gertie,” collapses during a windstorm. In 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt wins an unprecedented fourth term in office, defeating Thomas E. Dewey. In 1962, Richard Nixon, having lost California’s gubernatorial race, holds what he called his “last press conference,” telling reporters, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.” In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson signs a bill establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

November 7, 1984: The loss of the Democratic majority in the Ohio Senate will result in a cutback in services, both statewide and in Mahoning County, says Senate President Harry Meshel of Youngstown.

Congressman-elect James A. Traficant Jr. hails his 17,565-vote victory over U.S. Rep. Lyle Williams, R-17th, as the beginning of a new era in Mahoning Valley politics.

Electrical workers at the Packard Electric Division of General Motors narrowly ratify a new national contract with GM. The contract passes by a margin of 141 votes out of 6,811 votes cast. IUE Local 717 has 8,940 members.

November 7, 1969: After using the South High Field House for more than two decades for its basketball games, Youngstown State University is moving its home games to Austintown Fitch High School.

The price of gold in London drops to $38.85 an ounce, the lowest level in more than a year and is expected to drop more.

Gen. Robert E. Wood, retired chairman of the board of Sears, Roebuck & Co., who is credited with building the modern day Sears and founding its subsidiary, Allstate Insurance Co., dies at the age of 90 in Chicago.

November 7, 1959: Four efficient gunmen rob a Masury food market of more than $5,000 after herding eight employees of the South Side Corner Market into a restroom and nailing the door shut.

The Supreme Court of the United States upholds invocation of the Taft-Hartley Act in the nationwide steel strike, which means workers must return to their jobs during an 80-day “cooling off” period.

Fifteen Sharon, Pa., school teachers get a taste of railroading during a tour of the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad’s electronic classification yard at Struthers, as part of a business-industry-education day sponsored by the Shenango Chamber of Commerce.

November 7, 1934: In one of the biggest surprises of Mahoning County’s elections, Congressman John Cooper, stalwart of the Republican Party in the area, is able to squeeze out Lock Miller, Democratic poet, by 4,193 votes in the district that covers Mahoning, Trumbull and Ashtabula counties. Democrats were swept to office in most Ohio and local elections.

Three men are killed and 15 people are injured when machine gun fire opens on a parade of Democratic men, women and children in the Pennsylvania village of Haselton, Pa. Police are holding the leader of the Republican Party and members of his family, who were saved by state police from an angry mob.