Years Ago

Today is Tuesday, Feb. 14, the 45th day of 2012. There are 321 days left in the year. This is Valentine’s Day.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1862: Confederate President Jefferson Davis signs a proclamation making Arizona a Confederate territory.

1876: Inventors Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray apply separately for patents related to the telephone. (The U.S. Supreme Court eventually rules Bell the rightful inventor.)

1912: Arizona becomes the 48th state of the Union as President William Howard Taft signs a proclamation.

1920: The League of Women Voters is founded in Chicago; its first president is Maud Wood Park.

1929: The “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” takes place in a Chicago garage as seven rivals of Al Capone’s gang are gunned down.

1962: First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy conducts a televised tour of the White House.

1979: Adolph Dubs, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, is kidnapped in Kabul by Muslim extremists and killed in a shootout between his abductors and police.

VINDICATOR FILES

1987: The execution of Danny Lee Hill of Warren, convicted murderer of 12-year-old Raymond Fife, scheduled for Feb. 28, is postponed by the 11th District Court of Appeals, pending completion of Hill’s appeal.

The Youngstown area’s young lovers are suffering from sticker shock on Valentine’s Day as the price of a dozen long-stemmed roses reaches $70.

1972:About 80 Campbell city employees, including those in police and fire, fail to report for work after voting unanimously to strike.

Youngstown’s Model Cities Program gets a federal grant of $122,500 to train for jobs 95 people classified as disadvantaged or underprivileged.

1962: County officials and judges from five northeastern Ohio counties will tour the mothballed Brookfield Radar Base to determine if the facility can be converted into a juvenile rehabilitation center.

The Mahoning County Medical Society will have 18 stations opened in the county for distribution of the Sabin oral polio vaccine on Feb. 15 and 17.

1937: Early voters in a Vindicator straw poll oppose President Roosevelt’s plan to revamp the Supreme Court by a margin of 3 to 1.

One Cleveland man is in custody and another is being sought in the fatal beating of Robert Dukes, an off-duty New Castle policeman who died of internal injuries in New Castle Hospital.

A countywide drive to stem the rising tide of traffic fatalities is launched by the Mahoning Safety Institute of which Thomas Cooksey is president.