Years Ago

Today is Thursday, April 5, the 96th day of 2012. There are 270 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1792: President George Washington casts his first veto, rejecting a congressional measure for apportioning representatives among the states.

1862: During the Civil War, the monthlong Siege of Yorktown begins in Virginia.)

1887: In Tuscumbia, Ala., Anne Sullivan achieves a breakthrough as her blind and deaf pupil, Helen Keller, learns the meaning of the word “water” as spells out in the Manual Alphabet.

1933: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs an executive order creating the Civilian Conservation Corps and naming its director, Robert Fechner.

1964: Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur dies in Washington at age 84.

1987: Fox Broadcasting Co. makes its prime-time TV debut by airing the premiere episodes of “Married... with Children” and “The Tracey Ullman Show” three times each.

VINDICATOR FILES

1987: Two new local columnists debut in The Vindicator, Jane Tims and Juilene Osborne McKnight.

Poland Township trustees agree to join neighbors in the northeastern section of the township in an effort to eliminate rats. The township will replace a drainage pipe that some claim has deteriorated and provided a home for the rats.

1972: The U.S. Treasury Department and Boardman police are investigating a tremendous explosion that killed police character Randall Good, 24, and injured his wife, Deborah, 18, and a friend, Salvatore Pizzulo, 22. A bomb was attached to Good’s Volkswagen, which was parked in a carport at Brookwood Village.

Dr. David A. Belinky, Mahoning County coroner, rules the death of Bradley Bellino, 12, of McClurg Road, a homicide. The Boardman boy’s body was found in a trash container behind the Boardman Plaza four days after he disappeared.

1962: The State Highway Department announces an engineering firm to prepare plans for the first 11 miles of the Lake Erie-to-Ohio River Highway, which will be known as state Route 11.

Charles B. Cushwa Jr., president and chairman of Commercial Shearing & Stamping Co., is honored for distinguished service to the Mahoning Valley industrial region by 600 area industrial leaders at the Hotel Pick-Ohio.

1937: With a crowd of patrons on hand, the Ma-Fe Club, notorious South Side gambling resort at 1211 Market St., is raided and two men are arrested by city police.

The Youngstown Ministerial Association votes to oppose the parochial school aid bill, saying the proposal would “lead to further inroads into the treasury.”