Years Ago

Today is Wednesday, April 11, the 102nd day of 2012. There are 264 days left in the year.

Associated Press

On this date in:

1814: Napoleon Bonaparte abdicates as emperor of the French and is banished to Elba island.

1899: The treaty ending the Spanish-American War is declared in effect.

1912: Crosley Field, the longtime home of the Cincinnati Reds, has its opening day under its original name, Redland Field.

1951: President Harry S. Truman relieves Gen. Douglas MacArthur of his commands in the Far East.

1962: President John F. Kennedy holds a press conference in which he angrily denounces plans by United States Steel and other steel producers to raise prices (the companies ended up backing down).

1970: Apollo 13, with astronauts James A. Lovell, Fred W. Haise and Jack Swigert, blasts off on its ill-fated mission to the moon.

1981: President Ronald Reagan returns to the White House from the hospital, 12 days after he was wounded in an assassination attempt.

2002: U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr., D-Ohio, is convicted of taking bribes and kickbacks from businessmen and his own staff. Traficant was later expelled from Congress and sentenced to eight years in prison; he was released in September 2009.

Vindicator files

1987: Financially ailing WellCare, a Brookfield-based Health Maintenance Organization, is being liquidated.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is suing General Motors Corp. over alleged air-pollution violations at the Lords-town assembly plant.

1972: Construction begins on a major condominium development, a planned 800-unit, $18 million community in Bazetta Township, Trumbull county, that will be called Ivy Hill.

The Rev. Donald L. Steffy, minister of First Christian Church since 1967, resigns to become an associate minister in the Ohio Society of Christian Churches in Cleveland.

The Ohio House of Representatives is considering a bill that would allow the state to collect municipal income taxes and would distribute them according to both place of employment and place of residence. Youngstown opposes the bill, saying the city would lose $250,000 a year.

1962: Police are called to the strikebound Aerolite Extrusion Co. on Lake Park Road, Boardman Township, after pickets pelt the building with stones.

Youngstown numbers players who bet on 037 and thought it hit were disappointed when bookies took the position that The Daily Racing Form, from which winning numbers are gleaned, had made a mistake. They paid off on 137, which pays 400 to one rather than 037, which would have paid 600 to one.

Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. is studying the steel-price increases announced by U.S. Steel Corp. as to whether it will follow with a similar increase.

1937: City expenditures for the first quarter of 1937 total just 22 percent of the annual appropriation, reflecting Youngstown Mayor Lionel Evans’ order that department heads keep the city out of the red.

City police raid the Croatian Club on W. Federal St. and the Lennox Club on Franklin Ave., confiscating three slot machines and a marble board in a continuing drive against gambling devices in places holding beer and liquor permits.

Financial institutions say home construction in Youngstown is ahead of a year earlier, but high costs are retarding a boom.