Years ago

Today is Tuesday, Oct. 18, the 291st day of 2011. There are 74 days left in the year.

Associated Press

On this date in:

1867: The United States takes formal possession of Alaska from Russia.

1892: The first long-distance telephone line between New York and Chicago opens (it could handle one call at a time).

1931: Inventor Thomas Alva Edison dies in West Orange, N.J., at age 84.

1961: The movie musical “West Side Story,” starring Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer, premieres in New York, the film’s setting.

1962: James D. Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins are honored with the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology for determining the double-helix molecular structure of DNA.

1969: The federal government banned artificial sweeteners known as cyclamates because of evidence they caused cancer in laboratory rats.

1971: The Knapp Commission begins public hearings into allegations of corruption in the New York City police department (the witnesses included Frank Serpico).

1977: West German commandos storm a hijacked Lufthansa jetliner on the ground in Mogadishu, Somalia, freeing all 86 hostages and killing three of the four hijackers.

Vindicator files

1986: Ohio reaches a consent agreement in which the current and former owners of a North Lima truck stop will pay $460,000 in penalties for spilling thousands of gallons of diesel fuel from an underground storage tank beginning in December 1982.

Youngstown area federal offices begin sending “nonessential” workers home as Congress fails to approve a budget bill.

1971: A massive downtown Pittsburgh celebration marking the Pirates’ World Series victory erupts into a rampage of destruction, looting and sex in the streets.

Robert J. Catlin, president of the Trumbull County AFL-CIO, is honored as the Trumbull County Democratic Club’s “Man of the Year” during a banquet at the Mahoning Country Club.

Jackie Roche, junior elementary education major, is crowned Youngstown State University Homecoming Queen during halftime of the YSU-Western Illinois game, which YSU lost, 17-14, before 4,750 fans at Campbell Memorial Stadium.

1961: The Mahoning County Medical Society agrees to sponsor a mass polio immunization program in the county with the Sabin oral vaccine.

The 60-year-old McGuffey Road bridge, one of the city’s first grade elimination projects, is removed with cutting torches and power winches and hauled off to the scrap pile.

Carson J. Clancy, the Prudential Insurance manager in Youngstown since 1938, is retiring.

1936: Ferdinand Segal. an employee at Frank’s Pharmacy, is shot in the abdomen by one of two masked men.

A cursory look at thousands of ballots received from Mahoning, Trumbull, Ashtabula and Col–umbiana counties in The Vindicator’s straw poll shows a strong swing to President Roosevelt over Kansas Gov. Alf Landon.

A banquet is being planned at the YMCA to honor Lt. Col. Wade C. Christy, a veteran of the Spanish American War, the Mexican Wars and the World War.