Years Ago

Today is Sunday, Feb. 26, the 57th day of 2012. There are 309 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1861: Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., receives its initial funding from businessman Matthew Vassar.

1919: President Woodrow Wilson signs a measure establishing Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona.

1929: President Calvin Coolidge signs a measure establishing Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.

1952: Prime Minister Winston Churchill says that Britain has developed its own atomic bomb.

1962: After becoming the first American to orbit the Earth, astronaut John Glenn tells a joint meeting of Congress, “Exploration and the pursuit of knowledge have always paid dividends in the long run.”

1993: A bomb built by Islamic extremists explodes in the parking garage of New York’s World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000 others.

VINDICATOR FILES

1987: Youngstown City Council questions plans to move the Mahoning County Human Services Department from the Higbee building on Federal Plaza to the City Annex.

Of Ohio’s 88 counties, Mahoning County is sixth in the state in the rate of out-of-wedlock births to teen mothers, with 331 registered in 1985. That is 69 percent of the 478 births to teenagers in the county that year.

A House subcommittee considering a Reagan administration proposal to withdraw funding for construction of a new federal courthouse in downtown Youngstown says it will wait at least two weeks before making a decision on the $10 million appropriation.

1972: Fire destroys two recently remodeled warehouses in Campbell that were occupied by Industrial Painting and Sheeting Inc. and M&M Industrial Management.

The Rt. Rev. Thomas H. Cashmore, retired bishop of Dunwich, England, will return to St. John’s Episcopal Church as a guest preacher for the fourth time.

1962: U.S. Rep. Michael J. Kirwan of Youngstown says a Pennsylvania Republican congressman, Carroll Kearns, “must be a very fine engineer” to be in a position to proclaim a proposed Lake Erie-Ohio River canal as impractical. Kirwan adds that he looked up Kearns’ background and was surprised to find he was a music teacher before being elected to Congress.

A total of $38,150 is collected in the tri-county area in the door-to-door drive for the Heart Fund.

1937: Wage increases of 7.5 cents an hour that are being contemplated for steel workers would pump an additional $6 million a year into the Youngstown district economy.

A one-day sit-down strike by WPA workers in Trumbull County is settled after the men return to their jobs “under protest.”

The state of Ohio says it is out of money to pay local relief bills, including $54,575 owed to Mahoning County for December.