years ago

Today is Monday, Jan. 2, the second day of 2012. There are 364 days left in the year.

Associated Press

On this date in:

1811: Sen. Timothy Pickering, a Federalist from Massachusetts, becomes the first member of the U.S. Senate to be censured after he’d improperly revealed the contents of an executive document.

1900: Secretary of State John Hay announces the “Open Door Policy” to facilitate trade with China.

1921: Religious services are broadcast on radio for the first time as KDKA in Pittsburgh airs the regular Sunday service of the city’s Calvary Episcopal Church.

1942: The Philippine capital of Manila is captured by Japanese forces during World War II.

1974: President Richard M. Nixon signs legislation requiring states to limit highway speeds to 55 miles an hour. (Federal speed limits were abolished in 1995).

2006: Twelve miners die after a methane gas explosion at the Sago Mine in West Virginia, W.Va., but one, Randal McCloy Jr., is eventually rescued.

Vindicator files

1987: Atty. Robert Herron and Dr. Anthony J. Rich are appointed as acting Columbiana County prosecutor and coroner, respectively. Prosecutor David Tobin resigned after being elected to common pleas court; Dr. William A. Kolozsi resigned as coroner.

John A. Cafaro, 75, who with his brother, William, founded William M. Cafaro & Associates in 1950, dies in St. Elizabeth Hospital.

1972: Clarence Dent, a Pullman porter who met President Theodore Roosevelt while working on the Baltimore & Ohio and arranged a White House meeting between Roosevelt and Booker T. Washington, celebrates his 100th birthday. Dent adopted Youngstown as his home because he was impressed with the crowd that paid respect to Warren G. Harding’s funeral train.

Arson is suspected in fires that caused damages totaling $88,000 to three Amish barns near New Wilmington, Pa.

1962: The bodies of a Hubbard township father, his two young children and a babysitter are found in his station wagon on a road just over the Pennsylvania line. Mercer County Coroner Cyril T. Reinsel rules that Fred E. Brown, 54, shot himself after killing his son, Fred, 9; daughter, Catherine, 7, and the babysitter, Carol Tregaskes, 15.

Benjamin F. Fairless retired board chairman of U.S. Steel Corp. whose steel roots were in Youngstown, dies at his home in Ligonier, Pa., at 71.

1937: The Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. suspends operation of its cold strip mill, putting 1,000 men out of work due to lost orders during an autoworkers shutdown in Detroit.

Youngstown’s 1936 fire loss totaled $536,387, almost four times that of 1935, due largely to a $425,000 fire loss at Cold Metal Process Co.