Years Ago

Today is Palm Sunday, April 1, the 92nd day of 2012. There are 274 days left in the year. This is April Fool’s Day.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1789: The U.S. House of Representatives holds its first full meeting in New York; Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania is elected the first House speaker.

1853: Cincinnati, Ohio, establishes a fire department made up of paid city employees.

1933: Nazi Germany begins persecuting Jews with a boycott of Jewish-owned businesses.

1945: American forces launch the amphibious invasion of Okinawa during World War II.

1962: The Katherine Anne Porter novel “Ship of Fools,” an allegory about the rise of Nazism in Germany, is first published by Little, Brown & Co. on April Fool’s Day.

1972: The first Major League Baseball players’ strike begins; it lasts 12 days.

1976: Apple Computer is founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne.

1987: In his first speech on the AIDS epidemic, President Ronald Reagan tells doctors in Philadelphia, “We’ve declared AIDS public health enemy No. 1.”

1992: The National Hockey League Players’ Association goes on its first strike, which lasts 10 days.

VINDICATOR FILES

1987: RMI Co. officials in Niles praise a recent U.S. Commerce Department decision to impose an 84 percent anti-dumping penalty on titanium sponge products imported from Russia.

Retired Rayen School basketball coach Frank Cegledy uncovered an interesting sports fact: When Rayen established its basketball program in 1904 there were so few high schools with teams that it had to play college teams to fill out a schedule. That first year it played Indiana University, the same school that won the 1987 NCAA championship by beating Syracuse, 74-73, in New Orleans. Eighty-three years earlier, Indiana beat Rayen, 34-20, at Rayen.

1972: Two men invade the home of Maron Fares, manager of the Fisher Fazio supermarket in Struthers, and tie up his children and threaten his wife. The men call Fares at his store and order him to place the receipts in a paper bag across from the store, but he calls police instead. By the time police got to his Creed Street home, the extortionists had fled

Three young children and their parents die when fire sweeps through their home at 18 Wallis St., Farrell. Dead are Glenn and Margaret Nicholson, and their children, Christine, 6; Robin, 4, and Glenn Jr., 3.

Walter Wasilewski, New Castle’s “Sausage King,” sells about 30,000 pounds of sausage a year, nearly a quarter of that around Easter time, when traditional Polish Kielbasa is the favorite.

1962: Mahoning County and its 48 subdivisions will receive a record $23.6 million in current taxes, an increase of over $3 million over the 1961 distribution.

The 64-year-old Thaddeus Stevens Elementary School in New Castle is one of three schools that will be replaced in a building program over the summer.

WLIB TV, the first elementary school closed-circuit television station in the state, is bringing 24 live educational programs to 1,024 students in Liberty Township schools every week.

1937: The old Mary furnace in Lowellville, the only hand-filled blast furnace left in the district, is being repaired by Sharon Steel Corp. to resume making iron.

A reduction in telephone rates and auxiliary service charges that will save Youngstown district telephone subscribers thousands of dollars each month goes into effect. Individual and two-party lines are cut 50 cents; four-party lines, 25 cents.

The Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. is building a $75,000 warehouse beside the Watt Street Bridge, at the Erie Railroad tracks.