Years Ago

Today is Wednesday, Feb. 23, the 54th day of 2011. There are 311 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

1836: The siege of the Alamo begins in San Antonio, Texas.

1848: The sixth president of the United States, John Quincy Adams, 80, dies in Washington, D.C.

1861: President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrives secretly in Washington to take office, following word of a possible assassination plot in Baltimore.

1927: President Calvin Coolidge signs a bill creating the Federal Radio Commission, forerunner of the Federal Communications Commission.

1945: During World War II, U.S. Marines on Iwo Jima capture Mount Suribachi.

1954: The first mass inoculation of children against polio with the Salk vaccine begins in Pittsburgh.

1981: An attempted coup begins in Spain as 200 members of the Civil Guard invade the Parliament, taking lawmakers hostage.

VINDICATOR FILES

1986: Youngstown City Engineer Richard Marsico says the city will hire a consultant to see if there is an alternative to the planned breaching of Milton Dam.

John G. Roberts Sr., vice president for operations of Copperweld Steel Co., believes the company, which lost $20 million in 1985, will turnaround.

LTV Steel Co. says it has cleared a hurdle toward returning its Warren Works to profitability with an agreement reached with the USW to eliminate 535 jobs. Locals 1375, 6824 and 1328 approve the proposal with a combined vote of 1,674 to 375.

1971: Three junior high school students are injured and 40 others shaken up when an auto strikes a South Range school bus in a construction area on state Route 165.

The Mahoning County Republican Executive Committee recommends the Rev. Charles Frost for the post of City Council president vacated by John M. Hudzik.

1961: Two Georgia counties clash over which should get its hands on Philip “Fleegle” Mainer, notorious Youngstown hoodlum who was picked up for speeding by Youngstown police. A Glascock County grand jury, which indicted Mainer for burglary, accused neighboring Richmond County of allowing Mainer to flee.

Twenty Youngstown district residents escape injury when a Pennsylvania Railroad passenger express, “Spirit of St. Louis,” derails four miles west of Huntingdon, Pa.

1936: Youngstown’s per capita education costs were $15.31 per pupil in 1934, $2.99 above the national average for cities of 100,000 to 300,000.

“Blast Furnace” by Roland Schweinsburg is one of 70 paintings displayed at the Butler Art Institute in the Mahoning Society of Painters 16th annual exhibit. Before becoming a professional painter, Schweinsburg worked in local mills as a puddler.

Most of the Youngstown’s race bookie joints, closed by raids ordered by Mayor Lionel Evans, are operating secretly again in out-of-the-way places.