Years Ago

Today is Tuesday, Sept. 25, the 269th day of 2012. There are 97 days left in the year. The Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, begins at sunset.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1513: Spanish explorer Vasco Nunez de Balboa crosses the Isthmus of Panama and sights the Pacific Ocean.

1775: American Revolutionary War hero Ethan Allen is captured by the British as he leads an attack on Montreal. (Allen is released by the British in 1778.)

1789: The first United States Congress adopts 12 amendments to the Constitution and sends them to the states for ratification. (Ten of the amendments become the Bill of Rights.)

1904: A New York City police officer orders a female automobile passenger on Fifth Avenue to stop smoking a cigarette. (A male companion is arrested and later fined $2 for “abusing” the officer.)

1911: Ground is broken for Boston’s Fenway Park.

1919: President Woodrow Wilson collapses after a speech in Pueblo, Colo., during a national speaking tour in support of the Treaty of Versailles.

VINDICATOR FILES

1987: More than 400 police officers from across the nation gather in Campbell for the funeral of Youngstown Patrolman Paul Durkin at St. Elizabeth Church.

The Ohio EPA threatens Hubbard with fines for delays in building a new wastewater treatment plant.

1972: Members of United Steelworkers Local 1617 ratify a new three-year contract with General Fireproofing Co., over the objections of some dissident – mostly younger – employees.

Samuel J. Bonham, 79, former superintendent of Niles schools, dies of a heart attack in Columbus.

1962: As much as $20,000 may have been lifted from the 1,800-pound floor safe at Gaylord’s Discount Store on Ellwood Road by yeggs who broke into the building through the roof.

Downtown Youngstown merchants will again decorate the central business district for Christmas after a one-year interruption.

1937: A jury trying the case of John Steuben, CIO organizer charged with removing a railroad rail from a spur track at Struthers, is deliberating his fate and asks for the rereading of testimony of three state witnesses.

Hundreds of hunters are in Youngstown district woods on the first day of squirrel season. The bag limit is four per day.

The Chicago Board of Trade suspends trading in September corn to halt price fluctuations that are said to have resulted from an attempt to corner the market.