years ago

Today is Tuesday, Jan. 3, the third day of 2012. There are 363 days left in the year.

Associated Press

On this date in:

1521: Martin Luther is excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church by Pope Leo X.

1777: Gen. George Washington’s army routs the British in the Battle of Princeton, N.J.

1911: The first postal savings banks are opened by the U.S. Post Office. (The banks were abolished in 1966.)

1938: The March of Dimes campaign to fight polio is organized.

1949: In a pair of rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court says that states have the right to ban closed shops.

1958: The first six members of the newly formed U.S. Commission on Civil Rights hold their first meeting at the White House.

1959: Alaska becomes the 49th state as President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs a proclamation.

1961: President Dwight D. Eisenhower announces the United States is formally terminating diplomatic and consular relations with Cuba.

1993: President George H.W. Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin sign a historic nuclear missile-reduction treaty in Moscow.

Vindicator files

1987: J. Paul Good, the new president of the Mahoning County Board of Education and the Ohio School Boards Association, warns that lack of funds could force Mahoning County’s 11 local public school districts to consolidate some classes and services.

An aggressive Nittany Lions defense harasses the Miami Hurricane’s Vinny Testaverde, intercepting five of his passes to give Penn State a 14-10 win in the national championship game.

Edward J. DeBartolo loans $150 million to Campeau Corp. to finance its purchase of Allied Stores Corp., which only a few week ago was the bone over which DeBartolo and Campeau were snarling.

1972: The FBI crime report on Youngstown for the first nine months of 1971 show a 12.5 percent decrease from the same period a year earlier, including a drop in murder and manslaughter from 18 to 13 cases.

Sgt. John Olegar retires from the Youngstown Police Department, which he joined in 1942; Raymond P. Polombi is promoted to detective and Richard J. Kennedy to sergeant.

1962: A 38-year career in public service ends for John H. Lemon as the Democratic majority in City Council refuses to reappoint him as council clerk. His assistant, Joseph M. Bindas, gets the job.

The body of a newborn girl is found wrapped in a sweater near the curb in the 1000 block of Covington Street by a city water department crew. Dr. Nathan D. Belinky rules the death infanticide, saying she had lived for about six hours and died of exposure and injuries from being run over by a car.

Traffic accidents on Mahoning County streets and highways snuffed out 63 lives in 1961, the highest number in 13 years.

1937: The Youngstown Association of Democratic Ward Captains protests to Postmaster General James A Farley the appointment of Carl Armstrong as acting Youngstown postmaster, saying A.W. Craver, county Democratic Party chairman, should get the job.

Youngstown Mayor Lionel Evans announces that the city has retired $335,000 of the $625,000 in scrip that was issued by the Moore administration/.

The office of U.S. Rep. John G. Cooper of Youngstown, one of the last of the old-line Republican members of Congress to succumb to the Roosevelt landslide, is closed for the last time. Only 10 other members of the House who were n office when Cooper arrived in Washington in 1915, are still there.