Years Ago

October 19, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Today is Tuesday, Oct. 19, the 292nd day of 2010. There are 73 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1765: The Stamp Act Congress, meeting in New York, draws up a declaration of rights and liberties.

1781: British troops under Gen. Lord Cornwallis surrender at Yorktown, Va., as the American Revolution nears its end.

1951: President Harry S. Truman signs an act formally ending the state of war with Germany.

1960: The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is arrested during a sit-down protest at a lunch counter in Atlanta. (Sent to prison for a parole violation over a traffic offense, King is released after three days following an appeal by Robert F. Kennedy.)

The United States begins a limited embargo against Cuba as President Dwight D. Eisenhower bans exports to the communist-ruled nation covering all commodities except medical supplies and certain food products.

1967: The U.S. space probe Mariner 5 flies past Venus.

1977: The supersonic Concorde makes its first landing in New York City.

1987: The stock market crashes as the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunges 508 points, or 22.6 percent in value.

1994: Twenty-two people are killed as a terrorist bomb shatters a bus in the heart of Tel Aviv’s shopping district.

Entertainer Martha Raye dies in Los Angeles at age 78.

VINDICATOR FILES

1985: Nearly 1,400 Girard school district residents file suit in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court to remove three school board members from office, claiming fiscal irresponsibility and gross neglect of duty.

A profile of Youngstown State University and its student body shows, among other facts, that the university has 287 athletes, 39 percent of whom earn a grade point average of 3.0 or better.

Michael J. Dorrian, director of the Ohio Building Authority, says he is “99 percent sure” that a new state office building will be constructed in Youngstown within the next few years.

1970: Two Youngstown firemen, Dominic Barber and Joseph York, narrowly escape death when they were trapped by a crumbling wall and roof during a three-alarm blaze that destroyed the U.S. Plywood Division warehouse at 499 N. Meridian Road.

Triplets, two girls and a boy, are born in North Side Hospital to a surprised Liberty Road couple, Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Mercado.

A 68-year-old Poland man, apparently despondent over two traffic citations received over the weekend, dies of a self-inflicted bullet wound of the head on the porch of his home.

1960: FBI agents arrest a Youngstown man and a Warren man for the $18,378 robbery of the Cornersburg branch of Mahoning National Bank July 11. They are suspected in at least three other robberies.

John Salina, 28, of Wall, Pa., dies in the collapse of an interceptor sewer excavation cave-in on Grant Street in Niles.

Mezzo-soprano Betty Allen, a former Campbell and Youngstown woman, is taking the opera world by storm, singing to sold-out houses in Europe and South America, as well as New York.

1935: Four University of Pittsburgh students on their way to South Bend, Indiana, for the Notre Dame game are injured when their car fails to negotiate a sharp curve in Route 30 near Salem and strikes a blacksmith shop.

More than 700 people attend the funeral of 12-year-old Eugene Trushel of Willard, Ohio, who hanged himself after offering his pet rabbit as food for his hungry family. The rabbit’s life was spared.