Years Ago

Today is Friday, April 8, the 98th day of 2011. There are 267 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1861: Elisha Otis, inventor of the first elevator safety brake, dies in Yonkers, N.Y. at age 49.

1911: An explosion at the Banner Coal Mine in Littleton, Ala., claims the lives of 128 men, most of them convicts loaned out from prisons.

1935: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Emergency Relief Appropriations Act, which provides money for programs such as the Works Progress Administration.

1946: The League of Nations assembles in Geneva for its final session.

1952: President Harry S. Truman seizes the steel industry to avert a nationwide strike. (The U.S. Supreme Court later rules that Truman had overstepped his authority.)

1961: A suspected bomb explodes aboard the passenger liner MV Dara in the Persian Gulf, causing it to sink; 238 of the 819 people aboard are killed.

1981: General of the Army Omar N. Bradley dies in New York at age 88.

VINDICATOR FILES

1986: The Youngstown Black Leadership Summit Council warns that it will try to stop all federal money from coming into Mahoning County unless local governments and the business community begin addressing the needs of the black community.

Youngstown Mayor Patrick J. Ungaro goes to Chicago to meet with officials of the General Services Administration about the future of a proposed downtown federal courthouse.

A draft resolution of the United States Commission on Civil Rights calls for suspension of federal programs that reserve money or contracts for blacks, Hispanics or women.

1971: Trumbull County authorities identify two bodies that were retrieved in February and March from Mosquito Creek as Thomas Bulvony, 17, and Ralph Marilla, 17.

Youngstown police raid an apparently uninhabited apartment at 18 Davis Lane where potting beds had been constructed and marijuana plants were being grown indoors.

Some 320 firefighters and friends of Daniel Eberhart, past president of Local 312, International Fire Fighters Association in Youngstown, attend a testimonial dinner in his honor at Mahoning Country Club.

1961: A judge from Holmes County, W.W. Badger, voids absentee ballots in the race for Trumbull County commissioner, ruling that former Hubbard Mayor Joseph Baldine defeated Commissioner Dr. W. A James by 12 votes.

Frank Dill, 70, of Struthers is in fair condition in South Side Hospital after spending a night in an 11-foot deep hole in the road. He slipped off a catwalk while walking across the hole which had been dug for storm sewer work.

1936: Youngstown Law Director Vern B. Thomas says the city will start from scratch in putting together a survey of all potential sites for a new municipal airport.

The Civil Service Commission rules that three city employees who have filed for elective office must either drop out or quit their jobs.

A TWA Sun Racer luxury airliner en route from California to Pittsburgh crashes near Uniontown, Pa., killing 11 people and injuring three.