Years Ago

April 27, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Today is Tuesday, April 27, the 117th day of 2010. There are 248 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1570: Pope Pius V excommunicates Queen Elizabeth I.

1810: Ludwig van Beethoven writes one of his most famous piano compositions, the Bagatelle in A-minor, popularly known as “Fuer Elise” (for Elise).

1822: The 18th president of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant, is born in Point Pleasant, Ohio.

1865: The steamer Sultana explodes on the Mississippi River near Memphis, Tenn., killing more than 1,400 people, mostly freed Union prisoners of war.

1978: Fifty-one construction workers plunge to their deaths when a scaffold inside a cooling tower at the Pleasants Power Station site in West Virginia falls 168 feet to the ground.

VINDICATOR FILES

1985: Austintown, Boardman and Liberty townships drop their lawsuit over water rates charged the suburbs by Youngstown and agree to negotiate a pricing structure.

Ford Motor Co. reports first-quarter earnings of $783 million, a decline in profits of 12.7 percent from a year earlier.

1970: A gang of young men throw a shopping cart through the window of the Hills Department Store in the Lincoln Knolls Plaza and ransack the display area, fleeing before police arrive.

A 7th grade student at Princeton High School is being held, accused of shooting and wounding a 10th grade student at the school.

1960: A wind-whipped, two-alarm fire destroys the Dutch Maid Bakery and Penner Furniture Co. in the 2700 block of Market Street. Damage is estimated at $200,000.

Benjamin Richardson of Amherst Avenue, Girard, the father of seven, is killed by lightning while gathering stones for a wall in the “flats” along Walnut street.

1935: Police say a 19-year- old man arrested during a burglary at the Robert McCoy home, 37 Wilma Ave., has given them a list of 40 North Side and South Side homes he has burglarized.

Postal authorities and Akron police arrest three men as suspects in the robbery of a mail truck in Warren.