Years Ago

Today is Tuesday, Feb. 7, the 38th day of 2012. There are 328 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1812: The last of three major New Madrid Earthquakes, with an estimated magnitude of 7.7 (according to the USGS), shakes the central Mississippi River Valley.

1904: A fire begins in Baltimore that rages for about 30 hours and destroys more than 1,500 buildings.

1943: The government announces the start of shoe rationing, limiting consumers to buying three pairs per person for the remainder of the year.

1962: President John F. Kennedy imposes a full trade embargo on Cuba.

1984: Space shuttle Challenger astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart go on the first untethered space walk, which lasts nearly six hours.

VINDICATOR FILES

1987: Youngstown appears to be on the verge of losing the long-proposed federal courthouse downtown, but U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. says he will argue the case for the building before a House appropriations subcommittee.

Speaking to a capacity crowd of 1,900 at the MetroPlex Centre in Liberty, G. Gordon Liddy, the former White House aide who engineered the bungled break-in at the Watergate office building, leading to the resignation of President Nixon, says Americans are out of touch with reality and U.S. military might is far inferior to that of the Soviets.

The former Boardman Youth Center in Boardman Township Park is being refurbished and is being turned over by the BYC to the park after the United Way discontinues financial support.

1972: A 16-year-old Carbone Avenue youth is arrested in Hollandale, Miss., by FBI agents as the youngest of four men suspected in the Dollar Savings & Trust Co. robbery in which $40,000 was taken.

Four weather related deaths are recorded in the Youngstown area over a weekend of bitterly cold weather. Included are a Mineral Ridge man who died in a fire caused by an overheated stove and two who had heart attacks while shoveling snow.

1962: Youngstown Law Director Russel Mock says Youngstown’s charter will prevent former Mayor Charles P. Henderson from serving on the City Park Commission as a representative of the Youngstown Board of Education, which named him to fill the unexpired term of Robert P. Huxley.

An East Side Youngstown grocer is arrested after detectives search his store and find $1,000 worth of cigarettes and coffee stolen from Warren and Youngstown supermarkets.

Dr. Howard W. Jones, president of Youngstown University, reports that 7,482 students enrolled for the spring semester, an increase of 800 students from the previous spring.

1937: Municipal Judge Harry C. Hoffman says Youngstown’s four-man vice squad has not sought search warrants against alleged “bug” men since Jan. 21, when the judge questioned the vice squad’s methods.

A year after taking office, Mayor Lionel Evens has, against all odds, balanced the city’s books.

James M. McKay, president of Home Savings & Loan Co., tells shareholders that real estate sales in 1936 were $2 million, which was four times the amount a year before.