Years Ago

Today is Wednesday, Sept. 19, the 263rd day of 2012. There are 103 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1881: The 20th president of the United States, James A. Garfield, dies 21/2 months after being shot by Charles Guiteau; Chester Alan Arthur becomes president.

1957: The United States conducts its first contained underground nuclear test, code-named “Rainier,” in the Nevada desert.

1959: Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, visiting Los Angeles, reacts angrily upon being told that, for security reasons, he wouldn’t get to visit Disneyland.

1960: Cuban leader Fidel Castro, in New York to visit the United Nations, angrily checks out of the Shelburne Hotel in a dispute with the management; Castro ends up staying at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem.

1982: The smiley emoticon is invented as Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman proposes punctuating humorously intended computer messages by employing a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis as a horizontal “smiley face.” :-)

VINDICATOR FILES

1987: Ten years after “Black Monday,” when Lykes Corp. announced it was idling a major portion of its Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. Campbell Works, a solution to the area’s economic problems remains elusive.

Michael E. Kelly, president of the New Avanti Motor Corp., assures the Youngstown Press Club of his commitment to the Mahoning Valley, but also warns that he would close the fledgling car-building operation if workers unionized.

Cardinal Mooney scores a 7-3 victory over Austintown Fitch in the Steel Valley Conference opener before 8,500 fans at Fitch Stadium.

1972: Campbell police are investigating the theft of an estimated $20,000 in bonds, coins and stamps from a safe in the home of Gene Kennedy.

U.S. Rep. Charles J. Carney, D-19th, arrives home from a 10-day trip to Japan during which he visited numerous steel mills and talked to leaders about the need for a better trade balance with the United States.

Richard James Dota, 36, of Youngstown who had been at large after jumping bond in federal court in New York, is arrested by the FBI in Palm Springs where he was living under the name Peter DeNiro.

1962: Seventeen juveniles are in the detention home or the custody of their parents after Boardman police crack a string of burglaries over three months.

The Youngstown-Warren area is one of 1,069 areas around the country eligible for projects under President Kennedy’s $900 million public works program.

Youngstown Mayor Harry Savasten says the city faces cutbacks in employees and services with a 1963 budget that shows a potential $1 million shortfall.

1937: Detective Chief William Reed says a 17-year-old former high school student is in custody and has admitted attacking a 17-year-old East High School girl in a thicket near the school.

The only one-armed drum major in America, Keith M. Stemler, 622 Cohasset Drive, Youngstown, will lead the C.C. Weybrecht Post 166 drum and bugle corps of Alliance in the national competition at the American Legion convention in New York.