Years Ago

Today is Saturday, June 2, the 154th day of 2012. There are 212 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1886: President Grover Cleveland, 49, marries Frances Folsom, 21, in the Blue Room of the White House. (To date, Cleveland is the only president to marry in the executive mansion.)

1897: Mark Twain, 61, is quoted by the New York Journal as saying from London that “the report of my death was an exaggeration.”

1941: Baseball’s “Iron Horse,” Lou Gehrig, dies in New York of a degenerative disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; he was 37.

1953: Queen Elizabeth II is crowned in Westminster Abbey, 16 months after the death of her father, King George VI; it is the first such ceremony to be televised.

1961: During a state visit to France, President John F. Kennedy, noting the warm reception his wife was receiving, describes himself as “the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I have enjoyed it.”

1962: Soviet forces open fire on workers in the Russian city of Novocherkassk who had gone on strike over food shortages; accounts of the death toll vary, although a retired general who said he opposed the action put the figure at 22 to 24 during a 1989 interview.

1979: Pope John Paul II arrives in his native Poland on the first visit by a pope to a Communist country.

1986: For the first time, the public can watch the proceedings of the U.S. Senate on television as a six-week experiment begins.

1997: Timothy McVeigh is convicted of murder and conspiracy in the Oklahoma City bombing. (He was executed in June 2001.)

2004: The TV game show “Jeopardy!” begins airing contestant Ken Jennings’ 74-game winning streak.

VINDICATOR FILES

1987: Citing an internal General Electric Co. report about design flaws, five Youngstown area legislators, June Lucas, Ronald V. Gerberry, Michael G. Verich, Joseph J. Vukovich and Robert F. Hagan, ask Gov. Richard F. Celeste to permanently close the Perry nuclear power plant.

A mayoral advisory committee says Mayor Patrick Ungaro should seek assurances from the General Services Administration that a new federal courthouse downtown be designed in a way that allows future expansion and that includes a parking deck.

1972: Full-service members of the Youngstown State University faculty vote to have the Ohio Education Association as their bargaining agent.

The Rev. Martin S. Susko, executive secretary of the Youngstown Diocesan Pastoral Planning Program, is appointed rector of St. Columba Cathedral, succeeding the Rt. Rev. Msgr. Glenn W. Holdbrook, who is retiring.

The Youngstown Board of Education adopts a fully indexed salary schedule based on a beginning teacher salary of $7,034.

1962: The Soldiers Relief Commission of Mahoning County files suit in common pleas court seeking an appropriation of $426,000 from Mahoning County commissioners, twice what the commissioners allocated.

The State Board of Tax Appeals says Mahoning County residents have been overtaxed for years because four county officials, three of whom are dead, failed to follow state law, primarily by allowing subdivisions to levy taxes to which they were not legally entitled.

1937: The Republic Steel Corp. suspends food drops to Niles and Warren mills after two airplanes that were fired on by strikers crash, seriously injuring one of the pilots.

Metallurgist John W. Deetrick, on trial charged with shooting his wife to death in their North Side home, takes the stand in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court and emphatically denies firing the fatal shot or hearing it fired.

The Buckeye Retail Liquor and Beer Dealers Association seeks a temporary injunction to overturn the ban on the sale of beer, wine and liquor in Mahoning County imposed by Sheriff Ralph Elser and Mayor Lionel Evans during the duration of the steel strike.