Years Ago

Today is Thursday, April 14, the 104th day of 2011. There are 261 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1775: The first American society for the abolition of slavery is formed in Philadelphia.

1865: President Abraham Lincoln is shot and mortally wounded by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater in Washington.

1912: The British liner RMS Titanic collides with an iceberg in the North Atlantic and begins sinking.

1956: Ampex Corp. demonstrates the first successful videotape recorder at the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters Convention in Chicago.

1981: The first test flight of America’s first operational space shuttle, the Columbia, ends successfully with a landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

VINDICATOR FILES

1986: An early morning blaze causes heavy damage to the Thermatex plant in Newton Falls, but firemen were able to keep the blaze from reaching chemicals inside the plant that could have caused a chemical reaction.

A Mahoning County jury finds two of Sheriff James A. Traficant Jr.’s auxiliary deputies innocent of many charges alleging that they terrorized patrons in a New Middletown bar in 1984. Jurors were unable to reach a verdict on other charges.

1971: Robert J. Loftus, 57, a Youngstown IRS officer, is one of seven people who died in a fire at the Pick Carter Hotel in Cleveland. Two other Youngstown agents, Joseph B. Flanagan and John McPhillips, also in Cleveland for a tax seminar, escape the smoke and flames.

1961: The Ohio attorney general rules that county commissioners have the authority to buy uniforms for sheriff’s deputies, but are not obliged to do so, continuing a dispute between Mahoning County commissioners and Sheriff Ray T. Davis.

Two alert patrolmen, John Koneval and Richard Kish, help capture a burglar in Ted’s Gibson Street Market after noticing a bar had been removed from a side window.

1936: Mahoning County Common Pleas Judge J.H.C. Lyons dismisses all charges of embezzlement against James B. Shea, secretary to former Mayor Mark E. Moore, saying that the case presented by prosecutors during a week-long trial was insufficient.

About 115 Vindicator newsboys leave by B&O train on an overnight trip to Washington, D.C., which they will tour as a reward for their salesmanship.