Years Ago

Today is Friday, April 1, the 91st day of 2011. There are 274 days left in the year. This is April Fool’s Day.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1853: Cincinnati, Ohio, establishes a fire department made up of paid city employees.

1933: Nazi Germany begins persecuting Jews with a boycott of Jewish-owned businesses.

1945: American forces launch the amphibious invasion of Okinawa during World War II.

1946: Tidal waves strike the Hawaiian islands, resulting in more than 170 deaths.

1961: The sedative thalidomide is made available by prescription in Canada. (The drug, which was taken by pregnant women to relieve morning sickness, was found to cause devastating birth defects.)

1970: President Richard M. Nixon signs a measure banning cigarette advertising on radio and television, to take effect after Jan. 1, 1971.

1991: Cable TV’s Comedy Central is created through a merger of HBO’s The Comedy Channel and Viacom’s Ha!

VINDICATOR FILES

1986: The Cafaro Co. has bought the Sears store in the Eastwood Mall from Park South Corp. of Warren for $3 million. It was the only building in the Niles shopping center that was not owned by Cafaro.

Valley Mould Inc. will consolidate operations at its Hubbard plant and suspend production at its Chicago facility.

Ohio Bancorp, parent of the Dollar Savings & Trust Co., makes a $9.8 million offer to acquire Finance Ohio, a bank holding company in Martins Ferry.

1971: Youngstown Finance Director Charles Ramsey and other Ohio city officials tell Gov. John J. Gilligan that they will not support his state income tax proposal because it would do nothing to alleviate crises in the state’s major urban areas.

The Western Union office in Youngstown reports it is sending about 150 telegrams a day to President Richard M. Nixon protesting the court-martial conviction and life sentence of Lt. William Calley

1961: A Masury couple and one of their two daughters are killed when their car is rammed head-on by a wrong-way driver in Route 62 about a half mile from the Pennsylvania-Ohio line. Dead are John Guba, 46; Elizabeth Guba, 43, and their daughter, Carol, 19. The 33-year-old driver of the other car refused to take a blood test.

Austintown Trustee Michael Bokesch interrupts two young intruders rummaging through his home. They escape with two war souvenirs, a German-make machine gun and a P-38 handgun.

1936: Youngstown district steel production is at the highest point since the boom days of 1929, at between 72 and 73 percent, and the sale of new automobiles in the city sets an all-time record.

War between the United States Steel Corporation and the Youngstown district’s independent steel companies breaks into the open as U.S. Steel announces its opposition to a Lake Erie-Ohio River canal.