Years Ago

February 12, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Today is Friday, Feb. 12, the 43rd day of 2010. There are 322 days left in the year. On this date in 1809, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, is born in present-day Larue County, Ky. Naturalist Charles Darwin is born in Shrewsbury, England.

In 1554, Lady Jane Grey, who’d claimed the throne of England for nine days, and her husband, Guildford Dudley, are beheaded after being condemned for high treason. In 1795, the University of North Carolina becomes the first U.S. state university to admit students with the arrival of Hinton James, who is the only student on campus for two weeks. In 1818, Chile officially proclaims its independence, more than seven years after initially renouncing Spanish rule. In 1908, the first round-the-world automobile race begins in New York. (It ends in Paris the following July with the drivers of the American car, a Thomas Flyer, declared the winners over teams from Germany and Italy.) In 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is founded. In 1915, the cornerstone for the Lincoln Memorial is laid in Washington, D.C., a year to the day after groundbreaking. In 1940, the radio play “The Adventures of Superman” debuts with Bud Collyer as the Man of Steel. In 1959, the redesigned Lincoln penny — with an image of the Lincoln Memorial replacing two ears of wheat on the reverse side — goes into circulation.

February 12, 1985: Raymond L. Moffit, a nine-year veteran of Hubbard’s police department, places first on a recent promotional exam and will be named police chief by Mayor William Colletta.

U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. says after a meeting between members of the Mahoning County Task Force and GM’s real estate subsidiary that he is cautiously optimistic about the area’s prospects for landing the Saturn project.

The Boardman Board of Education votes 4-1 to rehire Superintendent Ronald L. Overfield for three years at a salary of $51,000.

February 12, 1970: John Kenney, sanitary engineering consultant in Ann Arbor, Mich., and a member of the Environmental Pollution and National Resources Committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, challenges members of the Garden Forum of Greater Youngstown to define the extent of pollution in the Mahoning River.

Nine people, including two city policemen, are injured in auto accidents in Mahoning and Trumbull counties. Patrolmen Clarence Greene, 31, and Dana Childers, 27, were injured when a car pulled out in front of their cruiser in Market Street.

Greg Rossi of Cortland, a senior art major at Youngstown State University, wins two of the top honors at the annual All-Ohio Art Show in Dayton.

February 12, 1960: To outward appearances, Robert Robinson, 25, of State St., New Castle, Pa., was dead when he arrived at South Side Hospital with no pulse or blood pressure after being stabbed seven times at the Cleveland Bar in Youngstown, but emergency room personnel revive him and he is in serious condition.

Some 250 cartons of score sheets and other materials to be used in the 1960 census arrive at the 19th Congressional District census office at 115 E. Federal Street.

Since Jan. 1, new Municipal Court Judge Don L. Hanni Jr. has suspended the $8 court costs in about two thirds of the 600 cases that have come before him. His predecessor, Judge Robert B. Nevin, suspended costs in only one case during the same period a year earlier. The practice is costing the court thousands of dollars income, says Clerk of Courts Richard Barrett.

February 12, 1935: The doors of Stambaugh Auditorium open for Youngstown’s first auto show to be staged by local distributors and dealers in eight years.

Matt Cross, 78, of the Beaver Apartments at Fulton and Beaver streets in Warren, dies in Riverside Hospital, where he was taken after spending three days in a bathtub in the apartments basement that had frozen over.

Because Walter Greenwood and Peter Thomas were the only two among the 15 Civil War veterans in the district able to get out in the winter, there was no Lincoln observance by veterans on the presidents’s birthday in Youngstown.