Years Ago

Today is Wednesday, June 15, the 166th day of 2011. There are 199 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1215: England’s King John puts his seal to Magna Carta (“the Great Charter”) at Runnymede.

1219: Forces led by King Valdemar II of Denmark defeat the Estonians in the Battle of Lyndanisse.

1775: The Second Continental Congress votes unanimously to appoint George Washington head of the Continental Army.

1836: Arkansas becomes the 25th state.

1849: James Polk, the 11th president of the United States, dies in Nashville, Tenn.

1864: Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton signs an order establishing a military burial ground, which becomes Arlington National Cemetery.

1904: More than 1,000 people die when fire erupts aboard the steamboat General Slocum in New York’s East River.

1942: The Albert Camus novel “L’Etranger” (“The Stranger”) is first published in France.

1944: American forces begin their successful invasion of Saipan during World War II.

B-29 Superfortresses carry out their first raids on Japan.

1978: King Hussein of Jordan marries 26-year-old American Lisa Halaby, who becomes Queen Noor.

VINDICATOR FILES

1986: State Rep. Joseph J. Vukovich, D-52nd, says he’s willing to sponsor legislation to eliminate one of the Youngstown Municipal Court judgeships, but wants City Council to act first.

Philosophical and financial turnarounds have forced the Mahoning County Children Services Board to embark on a new social experiment that will accelerate the return of troubled youths to their families.

Tamara Dieter, a Youngs-town native and graduate of Austintown Fitch High School and Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, takes fourth place in the Miss Ohio Scholarship Pageant at Mansfield. She competed as Miss Canton.

1971: A 22-year-old Austintown Fitch graduate who enlisted in the Air Force in 1968, S.Sgt. Kenneth Kowal, is one of 24 people listed as missing in the crash of an Air Force C-135 en route from American Samoa to Hickam Field in Honolulu.

The Youngstown City charter calls for wards to be redistricted after the federal census to maintain a reasonable equality of population, but the wards have remained untouched from when the home rule charter was adopted in 1923.

Douglas Fairbanks Jr. portrays the captivating charmer in “The Pleasure of His company” opening a week’s run at the Kenley Players in Warren.

1961: Valley Mould & Iron Corp. purchases Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co.’s Hubbard Works plant and signs a new contract with Republic Steel Corp. for molten iron.

The Mahoning County Planning Commission passes a resolution supporting the Lake Erie-to-Ohio River Canal in an effort to aid the efforts of Youngstown leaders testifying before a congressional committee in Washington, D.C.

Dennis Gillespie, Youngstown’s 16-year-old governor of Boys State in session at Ohio University, submits a budget in which he cuts his (imaginary) salary by $2,774 and increases the overall budget by $60 million of 1960, with much of the money going to highway construction.

1936: Maria Miller, Trumbull County’s oldest resident, who celebrated her 100th birthday May 5, dies at her Mineral Ridge home.

Steel output in the Youngstown district is rapidly approaching the 80 percent mark, which would be the highest since June 1929.

The joint Chamber of Commerce airport committee representing Youngstown, Warren, Sharon, Niles and Girard meets at the Youngstown Club to work out a number of details on the proposed tri-county airport at Vienna.