Years Ago

Today is Monday, July 25, the 206th day of 2011. There are 159 days left in the year.

Associated Press

On this date in:

1866: Ulysses S. Grant is named General of the Army of the United States, the first officer to hold the rank.

1909: French aviator Louis Bleriot becomes the first person to fly an airplane across the English Channel, traveling from Calais to Dover in 37 minutes.

1941: President Franklin D. Roosevelt freezes Japanese assets in the United States in retaliation for Japan’s occupation of southern Indochina.

1956: The Italian liner Andrea Doria collides with the Swedish passenger ship Stockholm off the New England coast and begins sinking; at least 51 people are killed.

1961: In a televised address on the Berlin Crisis, President John F. Kennedy announces a series of steps aimed at bolstering the military in the face of Soviet demands that Western powers withdraw from the German city’s western sector.

2000: A New York-bound Air France Concorde crashs outside Paris shortly after takeoff, killing all 109 people on board and four people on the ground; it was the first-ever crash of the supersonic jet.

Vindicator files

1986: The first mass-produced Honda Civic roles off the No. 2 assembly line at Honda’s Marysville plant. Honda of America expects to produce 360,000 Civics per year at the Ohio plant by 1988.

Al Lindsay, an attorney from Freeport, Pa., who is challenging U.S. Rep. Joseph Kolter in the 4th Pennsylvania congressional district, unveils his economic recovery plan, which calls for the federal government to acquire closed plants and either refurbish or demolish them. Lindsay is a Republican; Kolter a Democrat.

1971: The Youngstown Area Community Action Program stands to lose $150,000 from the $462,501 allocated for the next year for not meeting benchmarks in providing comprehensive neighborhood services.

The Duquesne Fishing & Hunting Club, an organization of some 60 Youngstown and Pittsburgh area men, remains as exclusive as it was in 1906 when it was organized and bought four islands in Georgian Bay near Britt, Ontario, Canada.

1961: Mahoning County sheriff’s investigators are prowling Youngstown with orders from Sheriff Ray T. Davis to close down any gambling they find and arrest the operators before notifying Youngstown police.

Fast-working burglars break into the Glacier Heights home of Paul S. Schwartz, owner of the Palm Cafe, and escape with $6,200 from a hidden safe.

Mahoning County Prosecutor Thomas A. Beil rules that County Engineer Samuel Gould can’t use $75,000 from the county sewer rental tax to build a new office for the sanitary engineer’s staff.

1936: Mayor Harold Burton of Cleveland arrives in Sharon, Pa., among some 5,000 people expected for the 50th anniversary of the Protected Home Circle, which has its home offices in Sharon. The old PHC building was destroyed by fire in April, but Burton says the fire “has not destroyed the vigor of the organization.”

Mahoning County commissioners will place a $100,000 bond issue on the fall ballot for construction of a psychopathic hospital in the county.