Years Ago

Today is Sunday, Oct. 21, the 295th day of 2012. There are 71 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1797: The U.S. Navy frigate Constitution, also known as “Old Ironsides,” is christened in Boston’s harbor.

1879: Thomas Edison perfects a workable electric light at his laboratory in Menlo Park, N.J.

1917: Members of the 1st Division of the U.S. Army training in Luneville, France, become the first Americans to see action on the front lines of World War I.

1944: During World War II, U.S. troops capture the German city of Aachen.

1962: The Seattle World’s Fair closes after six months and nearly 10 million visitors. (President John F. Kennedy, scheduled to attend the closing ceremony, cancels because of what is described as a “head cold”; the actual reason turns out to be the Cuban Missile Crisis.)

1967: The Israeli destroyer INS Eilat is sunk by Egyptian missile boats near Port Said; 47 Israeli crew members are lost.

1971: President Richard Nixon nominates Lewis F. Powell and William H. Rehnquist to the U.S. Supreme Court. (Both nominees are confirmed.)

1986: Pro-Iranian kidnappers in Lebanon abduct American Edward Tracy (he is released in August 1991).

VINDICATOR FILES

1987: Warren School Superintendent John Peckyno calls for implementation of proficiency tests for city school students before they can graduate.

President Reagan, in a turnabout apparently forced by the stock market crash, says he is willing to negotiate a budget with Congress and look at whatever proposal they have for raising taxes.

1972: Robert J. Ramhoff, an assistant engineer with Mahoning County’s sanitary engineer’s office, is named Youngstown’s air pollution control officer at a salary of $13,062. The position was vacated by Walter Rauh a year earlier.

Several hours after the Ohio Supreme Court rules to put the state income tax repeal question on the November ballot, repeal forces file suit in U.S. District Court charging supporters of the tax with misleading advertising by claiming that repeal would mean an increase in property taxes.

Joseph Natoli, 18, of McDonald, U.S. solo accordion champion, wins second place in world competition in Caracas, Venezuela.

1962:Ohio State’s 1962 Homecoming Queen is Lourdes “Ludy” Cruz, a 23-year-old graduate student in home economics from Quezon City, Philippines. She was supported by a group of independent women students running against nine other women in an election that saw 9,000 of OSU’s 29,000 students vote.

A front page editorial warns that demands for exorbitant wages and loose work rules threaten to drive jobs and investment money from the Mahoning Valley. General Fireproofing Co.’s average wage is $2.94 when that of its competitors is $2.28.

Three bandits in hooded sweat shirts hold up the King’s Department store in New Castle’s Westgate Plaza, escaping with $4,000 and fleeing toward Ohio.

1937: Vice raiders fan out in downtown Youngstown for the first time in months, seizing one marble board at the Youngstown Hotel, 311 Boardman St.

Mahoning County expects to collect $5,000 in fines from the Steel Workers Organizing Committee after 97 men plead guilty in cases arising from steel strike disorders in the spring.