Years Ago

Today is Monday, Feb. 14, the 45th day of 2011. There are 320 days left in the year. This is Valentine’s Day.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1778: The American ship Ranger carries the recently adopted Stars and Stripes to a foreign port for the first time as it arrives in France.

1895: Oscar Wilde’s final play, “The Importance of Being Earnest,” opens at the St. James’s Theatre in London.

1903: The Department of Commerce and Labor is established. (It is divided into separate departments of Commerce and Labor in 1913.)

1912: Arizona becomes the 48th state.

1920: The League of Women Voters is founded in Chicago; its first president is Maud Wood Park.

1929: Seven rivals of Al Capone’s gang are gunned down in the “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” in a Chicago garage .

1961: The radioactive element lawrencium is first synthesized at the University of California, Berkeley.

1979: Adolph Dubs, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, is kidnapped in Kabul by Muslim extremists and killed in a shootout between his abductors and police.

1989: Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini calls on Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie, author of “The Satanic Verses,” a novel condemned as blasphemous.

VINDICATOR FILES

1986: During a “Capitol for a Day” event in East Liverpool, Gov. Richard F. Celestes announces state and federal grants totaling $200,000 for roads and economic development in Columbiana County.

The Sharon Steel Corp. gets a 43 percent cut in the taxes it pays to Mercer County, Farrell city and the school district under terms of a negotiated settlement.

Youngstown launches an investigation into how a 144-unit apartment complex on Lockwood Boulevard was able to tap in into a fire hydrant line and pay for water for only half its units for 15 years.

1971: The Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles names 23 deputy registrars for Mahoning County, many of them new, to handle the sale of 1971 license plates beginning March 16.

Travelers warnings continue throughout the Youngstown area As 40 mph winds create snow drifts as high as 10 feet.

1961: Pennsylvania State Trooper Leonard P. Straple remains in critical condition in after being shot by a parole violator who was stopped for speeding in Route 422 near New Castle.

Burglars crack an office safe at Howard Wilson Pontiac Co. on Market Street in North Lima, escaping with $3,000 in checks and a small amount of cash.

1936: Urban and interurban traffic is almost paralyzed over night and remains crippled by a coating of ice that caused hundreds of cars to slide off the roads and dozens of pedestrians to seek treatment for injuries from falls.

City government and the Youngstown Real Estate Board being work on a real property inventory for the federal Works Projects Administration.

A joint city-county airport proposed by commissioner Thomas Bees is under consideration by commissioners and Mayor Lionel Evans.