Years Ago

Today is Wednesday, July 25, the 207th day of 2012. There are 159 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1866: Ulysses S. Grant is named General of the Army of the United States, the first officer to hold the rank.

1898: The United States invades Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American War.

1909: French aviator Louis Bleriot becomes the first person to fly an airplane across the English Channel, traveling from Calais to Dover in 37 minutes.

1941: President Franklin D. Roosevelt freezes Japanese assets in the United States in retaliation for Japan’s occupation of southern Indochina.

1952: Puerto Rico becomes a self-governing commonwealth of the United States.

1956: The Italian liner Andrea Doria collides with the Swedish passenger ship Stockholm off the New England coast late at night and begins sinking; at least 51 people are killed.

1960: A Woolworth’s store in Greensboro, N.C., that had been the scene of a sit-in protest against its whites-only lunch counter drops its segregation policy.

1962: The Bell System inaugurates Skyphone, an air-to-ground radiotelephone service, as American Airlines stewardess Hope Patterson places a call to Associated Press writer Francis Stilley in New York while flying over Lakehurst, N.J.

1992: Opening ceremonies are held in Barcelona, Spain, for the Summer Olympics.

2000: A New York-bound Air France Concorde crashes outside Paris, killing all 109 people on board and four people on the ground; it is the first-ever crash of the supersonic jet.

VINDICATOR FILES

1987: Don Gosney, chairman of the Columbiana County Democratic Party, says U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. should run for president, and Gosney thinks he will.

Two bishops, James W. Malone and Benedict Franzetta, from the Youngstown diocese, and two Youngstown priests, the Rev. William E. Bantz and the Rev. Orlando Rich, will join Pope John Paul II in Miami and Los Angeles during the pope’s second visit to the United States in September.

The Ohio budget provides a provision that will allow school districts to borrow money to make up for losses in tax revenue from LTV Corp.’s bankruptcy. Youngstown schools are estimated to lose $200,000; Warren schools, $160,000.

1972: Three boys barely able to see over the bench of Juvenile Court Judge Martin P. Joyce and three teenagers are sentenced to a month of house arrest and their parents are ordered to pay fines toward replacement of 106 windows broken at Bennett School in June.

Ohio Bell Telephone Co. employees at the company offices on Market Street give 192 pints of blood during a Red Cross blood drive.

Gov. John J. Gilligan signs legislation establishing a state Environmental Protection Agency.

1962: Salvation Army Capt. and Mrs. Ralph R. Leidy are honored for the quality of their leadership at a farewell dinner at Hotel Pick-Ohio. Capt. Leidy will become coordinator of Salvation Army operations in Akron.

Police searching the home of racketeer Joseph “Little Joey” Naples at 605 Carlotta Drive find a secret basement room containing a large quantity of bug slips, money guns and a mink coat. The house was built by Sandy Naples, one of two Naples brothers killed in the rackets war.

1937: It is moving day for The Vindicator, which will begin operating from new offices at Vindicator Square. This day’s paper is the last printed on the company’s old presses at Boardman and Phelps streets.

Despite increased building costs which have caused many disappointed middle class families to postpone or cancel their building plans, residential construction in Youngstown is continuing at a steady pace.