Years Ago

Today is Friday, Oct. 16, the 289th day of 2009. There are 76 days left in the year. On this date in 1859, radical abolitionist John Brown leads a group of 21 men in a raid on Harpers Ferry in western Virginia, where they seize a U.S. arsenal in hopes of sparking a slave revolt. (In the siege that follows, 10 of Brown’s men are killed and five escape. Brown and six followers end up being captured; all are executed.)

In 1793, during the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette, the queen of France, is beheaded. In 1909, the Pittsburgh Pirates win the World Series, defeating the Detroit Tigers 8-0 at Bennett Park in Game 7. In 1916, Margaret Sanger opens the first birth control clinic, in the New York borough of Brooklyn. (The clinic ends up being raided by police and Sanger is arrested.) In 1939, the comedy “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, opens on Broadway.

October 16, 1984: The Salem Board of Education, which has been fined by the EPA $12,000 because of friable asbestos in areas of Reilly Elementary School and the high school, hires an outside consultant to inspect other possible problem areas.

Lawrence County Common Pleas Judge Glenn McCracken orders striking New Castle area teachers back into the classroom. The strike began Sept. 4 and has already gone beyond the point that will allow the district to get all 180 school days in.

Anchor Motor Freight plans to create a minimum of 200 new jobs at its proposed Lyntz Road terminal, the company’s general manager tells Lordstown Village council.

October 16, 1969: About 1,000 Youngstown State University students and others protesting the continuation of the war in Vietnam march to Central Square, where there were several brief speeches and a prayer.

Thirty-four boxes of dynamite and 500 blasting caps are reported stolen from the New Castle Lime and Stone Co. on Erskine-Quarry Road near the Pennsylvania-Ohio line.

The village of Canfield applies to the Mahoning County commissioners to annex 300 acres of residential property northeast of the village from Canfield Township.

October 16, 1959: President Eisenhower’s invocation of the Taft-Hartley Act “may eventually end the steel strike, but it will not solve the issues,” A.S. Glossbrenner, president of the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., tells 86 manufacturers at a luncheon in the Youngstown Country Club.

Common Pleas Judge Erskine Maiden orders one-year suspensions of the drivers licenses of four motorists under Ohio’s new license law that assigns points for various infractions and provides for suspension when 12 points are reached.

Nine police officers trap three burglary suspects inside the Mahoning Valley Flour Co. at 944 W. Rayen Ave. Police were alerted to the burglary by a passerby who saw the men prying open a door with a crow bar.

October 16, 1934: Dr. Robert Cornish, a young California scientists, asks the governors of three states using lethal gas to execute prisoners for permission to try to revive executed criminals in the interest of science. Cornish became internationally known after reviving his dead dog, “Thirteen.”

Ohio Gov. George White denies clemency for Harry Pierpont, one of the members of the Dillinger gang that killed Sheriff Jess Sarber while breaking John Dillinger out of jail in Lima.