Years Ago

Today is Monday, Oct. 10, the 283rd day of 2011. There are 82 days left in the year. This is the Columbus Day observance in the United States, as well as Thanksgiving Day in Canada.

Associated Press

On this date in:

1911: California voters approve Proposition 4, giving women the right to vote, and Proposition 7, which establishes the initiative process for proposing and enacting new laws.

1911: Chinese revolutionaries launch the Wuchang Uprising which leads to the collapse of the Qing (or Manchu) Dynasty and the establishment of the Republic of China.

1913: The Panama Canal is effectively completed as President Woodrow Wilson sends a signal from the White House by telegraph, setting off explosives that destroy a section of the Gamboa dike.

1935: The George Gershwin opera “Porgy and Bess,” featuring an all-black cast, opens on Broadway; it ran for 124 performances.

1967: The Outer Space Treaty, prohibiting the placing of weapons of mass destruction on the moon or elsewhere in space, enters into force.

1973: Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, accused of accepting bribes, pleads no contest to one count of federal income tax evasion, and resigns.

Vindicator files

1986: United Way of Trumbull County receives a $1,063,000 boost from employees of the Packard Electric Division of General Motors, moving United Way closer to its 1986 goal of $2.9 million.

Youngstown will spend more than $2.5 million over the next year in federal money on street improvements and razing abandoned buildings.

The latest plan for the sale of Conrail is so flawed that Congress should call off the deal and reconsider in a year says U.S. Rep. Dennis Eckart , D-11th.

1971: Gov. John J. Gilligan says the Youngstown-Warren area is being particularly short-changed by the U.S. Labor Department’s system of allocation of public service job funds, which does not recognize that some communities are harder hit than others.

Consul General Athanasios Petropoulos of Chicago is a special guest at the 150th anniversary celebration of Greek independence attended by 600 people at the Ohio Hotel.

1961: Construction begins on a $500,000 addition to the Youngstown Hospital Association’s Nurse’s School at South Side Hospital.

The Most Rev. Michael Hinsuke Yashiro, presiding bishop[ of the Episcopal Church in Japan pleads for aid to education in his country during the annual regional vestrymen’s meeting at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Youngstown.

1936: Youngstown Mayor Lionel Evans orders Law Director Vern Thomas to drop the court fight to keep a charter repeal issue off the November ballot after an appeals court rules in favor of charter opponents.

The Vindicator’s straw poll shows a close battle developing between U.S. Rep. John Cooper, the Republican incumbent from Youngstown, and his Democratic Challenger, Michael J. Kirwan. Meanwhile, Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt is leading Kansas Gov. Alf Landon, a Republican,in Mahoning County, but trails in Trumbull and Ashtabula counties.

Joseph B. Ely, former Democratic governor of Massachusetts, says in Pittsburgh that Roosevelt is a revolutionary and “no true Jeffersonian Democrat could be expected to approve” his policies.