Years Ago

Today is Saturday, April 28, the 119th day of 2012. There are 247 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1758: The fifth president of the United States, James Monroe, is born in Westmoreland County, Va.

1788: Maryland becomes the seventh state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

1789: There was a mutiny on the Bounty as rebelling crew members of the British ship led by Fletcher Christian set Capt. William Bligh and 18 sailors adrift in a launch in the South Pacific. (Bligh and most of the men with him managed to reach Timor in 47 days.)

1817: The United States and Britain sign the Rush-Bagot Treaty, which limits the number of naval vessels allowed in the Great Lakes.

1918: Gavrilo Princip, the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and the archduke’s wife, Sophie, dies in prison of tuberculosis.

1937: Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is born in the village of al-Oja near the desert town of Tikrit (he was executed in December 2006).

1945: Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, are executed by Italian partisans as they attempt to flee the country.

1952: War with Japan officially ends as a treaty signed in San Francisco the year before takes effect.

Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower resigns as Supreme Allied commander in Europe; he is succeeded by Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway.

VINDICATOR FILES

1987: Work begins on a long-awaited $1.4 million water line to provide service in Canfield.

Curtis Elementary School in Brookfield is closed indefinitely because of concerns raised by parents and teachers over possible problems with asbestos in the building.

Ohio Edison customers will begin paying 9.6 percent more for electricity toward the $5 billion construction cost of the Perry nuclear power plant.

1972: A 23-year-old Willis Avenue man is held by police in the death of John Jarmolik, 37, who was gunned down and robbed as he repaired a sink in an apartment building he owned at 198 Willis Ave.

Atty. James W. Mumaw is named to the Youngstown Board of Eduction to the seat vacated by Chester McPhee, who resigned three days after Superintendent Richard F. Veiring resigned following the board’s adoption of a disciplinary policy proposed by North Side Concerned Parents. The board declines to renew the contracts of two teachers at Hayes Middle School, focus of the disciplinary controversy.

Two Democratic candidates for president, Hubert H. Humphrey, D-Minn., and Henry Jackson, D-Washington, will speak at a party rally at St. Christine Church. It had been hoped that Edmund Muskie, D-Maine, would also attend, but he has suspended his campaign.

1962: Catholic War Veterans open their Ohio convention in Youngstown with the laying of a wreath at the Man on the Monument Civil War statue in Central Square.

Douglas J. Cline, 17-month-old son of Mr. and Mrs. Ray Cline of Mineral Ridge, is killed when he darts into the path of his grandmother’s car in the driveway of his home.

A westbound Pennsylvania Railroad freight train spewing hot carbon from its exhaust stacks spreads a 25-mile line of grass fires between New Galilee, Pa., and Salem

1937: The Youngstown Community Chest raises $61,219 on its first day, about a fourth of the campaign goal.

Robert Byrne, age 9, may lose the sight in one eye after he is struck by the pellet from an air rifle while playing with friends at the General Fireproofing dump near Logan Avenue.

Mrs. Jane Hudson, who was born on a plantation in Alabama and was a slave of Travis Hudson, a minister, for 20 years until the end of the Civil War, dies at the home of her daughter, 709 North Ave., after an illness of several months.