Years Ago

Today is Friday, June 8, the 160th day of 2012. There are 206 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

A.D. 632: The prophet Muhammad dies in Medina.

1912: The ballet “Daphnis et Chloe,” with music by Maurice Ravel, choreography by Michel Fokine and Vaslav Nijinsky and Tamara Karsavina in the title roles, is premiered by the Ballets Russes in Paris.

1953: The Supreme Court rules that restaurants in the District of Columbia cannot refuse to serve blacks.

1962: 20th Century Fox fires actress Marilyn Monroe from its production “Something’s Got to Give,” saying she is unreliable. (Fox later changes its mind, but Monroe dies before filming could resume, and the movie is abandoned.)

1967: Thirty-four U.S. servicemen are killed when Israel attacks the USS Liberty, a Navy intelligence-gathering ship in the Mediterranean. (Israel later says the Liberty had been mistaken for an Egyptian vessel.)

1972: During the Vietnam War, a South Vietnamese Air Force jet drops a napalm bomb onto the village of Trang Bang. Associated Press photographer Nick Ut captures the image of a screaming 9-year-old girl, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, as she runs naked and severely burned from the scene of the explosion.

1982: Ronald Reagan becomes the first American president to address a joint session of the British Parliament.

VINDICATOR FILES

1987: Youngstown Mayor Patrick J. Ungaro pushes for the razing of vacant mills in the city and redevelopment of the land.

The American dream of home ownership is more affordable in the Mahoning Valley than almost anywhere else in the U.S. An eight-room house that sold for $26,250 in a New York suburb in 1962 sells for $234,000 in 1987, but would cost $55,000 to $70,000 in Boardman or Canfield.

1972: Youngstown’s seven wards are realigned by a 5-2 vote of City Council, the first reapportionment of the city in 49 years.

Three Youngstown men are among 400 graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point: Percy Squire, Charles J. Coleman and Randall Bookout.

The estate of the late philanhropists Mr. and Mrs. L.A. Beeghly, owned by the Youngstown Hospital Association, has been leased by the Boardman Youth Center Inc. for use as a youth center.

1962: Youngstown Municipal Judge Don L. Hanni Jr. fines two men $500 and sentences them to six months in jail for stripping parts from a stolen car. Two other men have been charged with stealing the car in Cleveland and have been sent to that city.

City officials and county commissioners fail to reach an agreement on the city’s proposal to extend water service to an area of Canfield Township. The county wanted to restrict the city to a smaller area than suggested by the city.

1937: Mahoning County Sheriff Ralph Elser deputizes 100 men and Trumbull Sheriff Roy Hardman 150 in an effort to maintain order during the steel strike.

Mayor Lionel Evans and Sheriff Elser lift the ban on the sale of 3.2 beer in Youngstown and Mahoning County.

Steel strikers appeal to President Roosevelt for his personal aid in ending a strike by the Steel Workers Organizing Committee against independent steel producers.

R.D. Knopp, largest grower of strawberries in Mahoning County at his Sebring-Pine Lake Road farm, says he expects the best crop in years, about 80,000 quarts from his 11 acres of plants.