Years Ago

Today is Thursday, Jan. 27, the 27th day of 2011. There are 338 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1880: Thomas Edison receives a patent for his electric incandescent lamp.

1943: Some 50 bombers strike Wilhelmshaven in the first all-American air raid against Germany during World War II.

1945: Soviet troops liberate the Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland.

1967: Astronauts Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Edward H. White and Roger B. Chaffee die in a flash fire during a test aboard their Apollo spacecraft.

More than 60 nations sign a treaty banning the orbiting of nuclear weapons.

1973: Vietnam peace accords are signed in Paris.

1981: President Ronald Reagan greets the 52 former American hostages released by Iran at the White House.

VINDICATOR FILES

1986: For the first time in history, the Mahoning County Board of Education has received requests from parents to remove their children from school and teach them at home. Parents must meet a number of criteria, including that the instructor be a person with at least a bachelor’s degree, that instruction fill the same number of hours a day and days a week as traditional school and that courses be approved by the county board.

A 16-year-old cat is the beneficiary of a $10,000 trust fund in the $220,000 estate left by Miss Ruth Partridge, 76, of Warren, a retired teacher who died Jan. 4.

1971: Trumbull County Probate Judge Reed S. Battin finds all three Trumbull county commissioners guilty of contempt and orders them jailed for three days for failing to authorize pay raises for the court’s employees.

1961: Youngstown City Council is asked to contribute $5,000 to help establish a nonprofit corporation to operate a nonprofit educational television station in the Youngstown area.

Col. L.R. Boals, Vindicator music critic and WFMJ music director, leaves his sizable record collection and $10,000 to Youngstown University, with half the money bequeathed for a scholarship annually for a Dana School of Music student.

1936: Many rivers freeze routinely in the winter, but when the Mahoning River freezes over, it’s news; old timers seeing the Mahoning River frozen over say they only remember it happening once or twice this century.

New Deal insiders are silently charting their campaign strategy in view of Alfred Smith’s threat to “take a walk” if the Democratic Convention in June endorses what Smith assails as socialist policies of the Roosevelt administration.