Years Ago

Today is Saturday, Jan. 8, the eighth day of 2011. There are 357 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1798: The 11th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is declared in effect by President John Adams nearly three years after its ratification by the states; it prohibits a citizen of one state from suing another state in federal court.

1811: Charles Deslondes leads an uprising by hundreds of slaves in the Territory of Orleans in present-day Louisiana. (The revolt, which claims the lives of two whites, fails on its third day, and Deslondes and many of his followers are killed by federal and local troops.)

1815: U.S. forces led by Gen. Andrew Jackson defeat the British in the Battle of New Orleans — the closing engagement of the War of 1812.

1918: President Woodrow Wilson outlines his “Fourteen Points” for lasting peace after World War I.

Mississippi becomes the first state to ratify the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, which established Prohibition.

1935: Rock-and-roll legend Elvis Presley is born in Tupelo, Miss.

1959: In Cuba, Fidel Castro and his army arrive in Havana in triumph following the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista.

1964: President Lyndon B. Johnson declares a “War on Poverty” in his State of the Union address.

1973: The Paris peace talks between the United States and North Vietnam resume.

VINDICATOR FILES

1986: On a scale of 10, Youngstown’s downtown area gets a grade of 2 or 3 from a Columbus city planner.

Strouss stores in the Youngstown area and western Pennsylvania will close for five days so that changes can be made in computer coding as Strouss becomes Kaufmann’s.

Anthony Julian is elected president of the Youngstown Board of Education; Edna Pincham is vice president.

1971: Ohio Atty. Gen. William J. Brown announces the appointment of Edward A. Flask of Youngstown as an assistant attorney general.

A jury in Brookfield County Court, Trumbull County, finds Bernard Nemcosky of Cortland not guilty of violating a state law prohibiting the possession of a nongame bird after he rescued “Weep,” a brown thrasher, from the highway and kept it for five years.

Construction of a $7.5 million Technical and Community College by Youngstown State University is given tentative approval by the Youngstown Development Review Committee, contingent on city council approving the vacation of Elm Street.

1961: U.S. Rep. Michael J. Kirwan, D-Youngstown, asks the Army Engineers Corps to send copies of a report on a projected Lake Erie-Ohio River Canal to legislators handling depressed-area bills.

Stanley E. Babcock, president of the Mahoning County Tuberculosis and Health Association, reports 42,432 Mahoning County residents were given free chest X-rays in 1960.

U.S. Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, suggests legislation that would bar doctors and other health-care professionals who are barred from practicing in one state from participating in federal health programs in another,

1936: Youngstown Finance Director Frank H. Barton says city employees can expect to receive a regular paycheck on Jan. 20, but back pay amounting to as much as $150,000 will be delayed indefinitely.

Another New Deal measure, the 1935 rail pensions law, is being challenged as unconstitutional in a suit filed by 135 of the nation’s railroads.