Years Ago

Today is Friday, Jan. 7, the seventh day of 2011. There are 358 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1610: Astronomer Galileo Galilei begins observing three of Jupiter’s moons; he spots a fourth moon almost a week later.

1789: The first U.S. presidential election is held. Americans vote for electors who, a month later, choose George Washington to be the nation’s first president.

1894: One of the earliest motion picture experiments takes place at the Thomas Edison studio in West Orange, N.J., as Fred Ott is filmed taking a pinch of snuff and sneezing.

1927: Commercial transatlantic telephone service is inaugurated between New York and London.

1942: The Japanese siege of Bataan begins during World War II.

1972: Lewis F. Powell, Jr. and William H. Rehnquist are sworn in as the 99th and 100th members of the U.S. Supreme Court.

VINDICATOR FILES

1986: Trumbull County Democratic Party officials say they don’t know why U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. is upset with the party’s plan for a public forum on Traficant’s proposal for a Lake Erie-Ohio River Canal.

Classified employees at Youngstown State University file a grievance over a new policy by which offices at the university will not be automatically closed if classes are cancelled because of bad weather.

1971: The Ohio Senate votes unanimously to confirm the reappointment of Clingan Jackson, Vindicator politics editor, to the Ohio Civil Rights Commission.

The Senate also confirmed the appointment of Atty. John Newman to the board of trustees of Youngstown State University,

The Akron University Zips hand Youngstown State a 98-73 loss, breaking the Penguins 22-game home winning streak.

1961: United Engineering and Foundry Co. buys Chrysler Corp.’s idle Youngstown stamping plant on Hezlep Street.

Some 625 people attend a benefit at Poland Memorial Methodist Church to raise money for Baz Wellman, whose greenhouse suffered $50,000 damage in a fire.

The fifth member of a gang that robbed the Griswold Store in downtown Warren of $20,000 in 1956 is finally nabbed, arrested in his hideout at King’s Motel on Route 433 near the Ohio-Pennsylvania line.

1936: Mayor Lionel Evans promises Youngstown merchants support from the new administration in “cleaning up the rowdyism” that accompanies labor disputes.

P.B. Mulholland, presiding judge of Youngstown Municipal Court, says he “can’t go along” with mayor Lionel Evans’ plan to cut salaries of court employees.