Years Ago

Today is Saturday, Nov. 12, the 316th day of 2011. There are 49 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1815: American suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton is born in Johnstown, N.Y.

1927: Josef Stalin becomes the undisputed ruler of the Soviet Union as Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Communist Party.

1936: The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opens as President Franklin D. Roosevelt presses a telegraph key in Washington, D.C., giving the green light to traffic.

1942: The World War II naval Battle of Guadalcanal begins. (The Allies end up winning a major victory over the Japanese.)

1948: Former Japanese premier Hideki Tojo and several other World War II Japanese leaders are sentenced to death by a war crimes tribunal.

1977: The city of New Orleans elects its first black mayor, Ernest “Dutch” Morial, the winner of a runoff.

1996: A Saudi Boeing 747 jetliner collides shortly after takeoff from New Delhi, India, with a Kazak Ilyushin-76 cargo plane, killing 349 people.

2001: American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus A300 headed to the Dominican Republic, crashes after takeoff from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 260 people on board and five people on the ground.

VINDICATOR FILES

1986: Youngstown Superintendent Emanuel Catsoules meets with an East High English teacher who referred to her students as “low lifes” but says he has not decided whether she will be disciplined or what the discipline might be.

U.S. Tax Court Judge John B. Williams refuses to dismiss the government’s tax evasion case against U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. and refuses Traficant’s motion that Williams disqualify himself.

A $750,000 rehabilitation of the Spring Common Bridge in downtown Youngstown nears completion.

1971: The worst traffic accident in Youngstown history leaves seven people dead after a car rolls along the sidewalk on Federal Street near Hazel sending bodies flying into the air before it stops near the McKelvey Parkade.

An estimated 5,000 people turn out in 40 degree weather for the United Veterans Council of Youngstown’s Veterans Day parade.

Three of Warren’s laid off firemen will be rehired with the help of some $30,000 in Emergency Employment Act funds the city will receive from the state.

Frank Kline, chairman of the Youngstown Park and Recreation Commission for 16 years, announces his resignation.

The Rev. Charles Coughlin, famed radio priest of the 1930s, returns to the pulpit of his church in Royal Oak, Mich., for the first time in five years, delivering an attack on the Nixon administration, which he called a “leftist government that talks rightist out of the left side of its mouth.”

1961: An estimated 8,000 Youngstowners line the downtown streets for the annual Veterans Day parade, which lasted nearly an hour.

Robert Sebulsky, 31, a former standout football star for the Rayen School Tigers, is found dead in the back seat of his car outside the North Side Tavern at 1711 Belmont Avenue.

A 10-man delegation goes from Youngstown to Hagerstown, Md., to study how closed-circuit television can be used in schools. Hagerstown has 700 TV sets, making it the most complete installation in the country

Charles A. Vimmerstedt, manager of the Safety Council of Greater Youngstown, questions the insurance industry’s rate structure, which has given Youngstown the highest rates in the state.

1936: Because few new men were trained during the depression, Youngstown mills are reporting a severe shortage of skilled men such as machinists and welders as production increases.

Speaking at Youngstown’s Armistice Day observance, Col. William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan, World War hero and former assistant attorney-general, says, “we cannot permit the diplomats and politicians to kick away the peace that fighting men have gained, which is happening in Europe today.”