Years ago

February 23, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Today is Tuesday, Feb. 23, the 54th day of 2010. There are 311 days left in the year. On this date in 1945, during World War II, U.S. Marines on Iwo Jima capture Mount Suribachi, where they raise the American flag twice. (The second flag-raising is captured in the iconic photograph taken by Joe Rosenthal of The Associated Press.)

In 1861, President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrives secretly in Washington to take office, following word of a possible assassination plot in Baltimore. In 1870, Mississippi is readmitted to the Union. In 1927, President Calvin Coolidge signs a bill creating the Federal Radio Commission, forerunner of the Federal Communications Commission. In 1942, the first shelling of the U.S. mainland during World War II occurs as a Japanese submarine fires on an oil refinery near Santa Barbara, Calif., causing little damage. In 1954, the first mass inoculation of children against polio with the Salk vaccine begins in Pittsburgh. In 1970, Guyana becomes a republic within the Commonwealth of Nations. In 1981, an attempted coup begins in Spain as 200 members of the Civil Guard invade the Parliament, taking lawmakers hostage. (However, the attempt collapses 18 hours later.)

February 23, 1985: U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. says he will go to Japan for talks with Mitsubishi Motors Corp. about bringing the Japanese automaker’s first U.S. plant to the Mahoning Valley.

Minneapolis-based North Star Steel Co. makes a conditional offer to buy the idled Hunt Energy Co.’s West Federal Street mini-mill as part of a $100 million project that would employ up to 300 people.

A plan to split the van and car assembly plants at the General Motors Lordstown complex has apparently hit a snag at the corporate level.

February 23, 1970: A knife wielding kidnapper abducts two young brothers from a North Side street, touching off a large scale search by police and members of YSU fraternities before the youths are found 11 hours later in a stalled car in Mill Creek Park. A 30-year-old West Scott Street man is arrested and taken to Woodside Receiving Hospital.

Nine thousand volunteers collect $47,000 in Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties as part of the month-long American Heart Fund drive which has raised more than $109,000 so far.

Reed Benson, national director of public relations for the John Birch Society and son of former Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson, will speak on the subject of Communists targeting American youth. The address is sponsored by the Youngstown Area Education Forum.

B’Nai B’rith’s Anti-Defamation League names Sister Jerome of the Ursuline Order and the Rev. Colbert Cartwright, pastor of Central Christian Church, as the outstanding man and woman of the year in the field of human relations.

February 23, 1960: Former Youngstown Police Chief Edward J. Allen, writing in International Police Chief Magazine, defends the death penalty as a matter of divine and human justice. Allen is police chief of Santa Ana, Calif.

Youngstown appeals to Common Pleas Court for relief from an Ohio Water Pollution Control Board’s order that the city stop dumping sewage into the Mahoning River.

President Eisenhower vetoes a $900 million water pollution control bill on the grounds that state and local government should foot most of the bill, not the federal government.

Vandals ransack 21 rooms of Covington School, breaking 49 windows and emptying desks of papers, pencils and books.

February 23, 1935: Police Chief Leroy Goodwin orders a thorough dragging of Lake Cohasset in a search for 13-year-old Frank Suhovecky, who has been missing for five days.

Walter Mitchel is elected president of the Mahoning County Democratic Club to succeed Charles O. Bannon.

Dr. Louis C. Wright, president of Baldwin-Wallace College, is guest speaker at Indianola M.E. Church to mark its 6th anniversary and Belmont M.E. Church to mark its 57th anniversary.