Years Ago

Today is Wednesday, April 25, the 116th day of 2012. There are 250 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1792: Highwayman Nicolas Jacques Pelletier becomes the first person under French law to be executed by the guillotine.

1901: New York Gov. Benjamin Barker Odell Jr. signs an automobile registration bill which imposes a 15 mph speed limit on highways.

1944: The United Negro College Fund is founded.

1945: During World War II, U.S. and Soviet forces link up on the Elbe River, a meeting that dramatizes the collapse of Nazi Germany’s defenses.

1992: Islamic forces in Afghanistan take control of most of the capital of Kabul following the collapse of the Communist government.

VINDICATOR FILES

1987: U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. of Poland, D-17th, says the prospects for a new federal courthouse being built in Youngstown look better than ever.

North Star Steel Ohio will double employment at its Brier Hill plant by the time it begins producing oil tubular casings in December.

1972: The Niles Board of Education seeks to institute a mandatory retirement age of 65 for tenured teachers. Board member Stephen Vrabel says the move would open jobs for young people entering education.

Sen. Henry Jackson, D-Washington, warns Youngstown Democrats that radical leftists who disrupted the 1968 convention appear poised to do so again.

Dr. Richard F. Viering, superintendent of Youngstown schools for two years, is named to head the Bedford School District. He resigned from the Youngstown job in a dispute over discipline policy in the district.

1962: St. Dominic Church, one of the largest Catholic parishes, is robbed of $13,500 in Easter Sunday collections by three masked, armed men who confronted two Dominican priests in the rectory and gained entrance to a large safe.

Roger Blough, chairman of U.S. Steel Corp., says the company will have to take other measures to maximize profits after rescinding a price increase under government pressure. Blough says earnings of $58 million in the first quarter left “nothing” for needed improvements.

1937: Dr. James A. Sherbondy, whose surgical skills restored thousands of Youngstowners to health and had an international reputation, dies of a heart attack at his home at 335 Fairgreen Ave. He was 59.

A last minute discovery that Helmut Hirsch, son of a New Castle, Pa., man, is an American citizen may induce German Chancellor Hitler to spare the youth from execution for carrying explosives that were believed destined for an assassination plot against Hitler.