Years Ago

Today is Sunday, Feb. 17, the 48th day of 2013. There are 317 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1863: The International Red Cross is founded in Geneva.

1897: The forerunner of the National PTA, the National Congress of Mothers, convenes its first meeting in Washington.

1904: The original two-act version of Giacomo Puccini’s opera “Madama Butterfly” is poorly received at its premiere at La Scala in Milan, Italy.

1913: The Armory Show, a landmark exhibit of European modern art, opens in New York City. (One work in the exhibit that stirs much controversy is “Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2),” an abstract painting by French artist Marcel Duchamp.)

1933: Newsweek is first published by Thomas J.C. Martyn under the title “News-Week.”

1947: The Voice of America begins broadcasting to the Soviet Union.

1964: The Supreme Court, in Wesberry v. Sanders, rules that congressional districts within each state had to be roughly equal in population.

1972: President Richard M. Nixon departs the White House with his wife, Pat, on a historic trip to China.

1988: Lt. Col. William Higgins, a Marine Corps officer serving with a United Nations truce monitoring group, is kidnapped in southern Lebanon by Iranian-backed terrorists (he is later slain by his captors).

1993: A ferry carrying some 1,000 people sinks off Haiti; at least 700 of the people on board drown.

VINDICATOR FILES

1988: Laboratory employees at Western Reserve Care System are seeking what amounts to hazardous duty pay for work involving the routine handling of AIDS-contaminated specimens.

A Youngstown State University student, Kenmore Drake, 21, is found gagged, bound and stabbed to death at a home of Dr. Timothy Lyons, dean of the YSU College of Fine and Performing Arts. Police say Drake was house-sitting while Lyons was traveling.

Columbiana County’s treasurer says $278,116 in bounced checks, including some paychecks for county employees, are due to his office having to work shorthanded because of layoffs due to lack of funds.

1973: Temperatures in the Youngstown area drop to 11 degrees below zero.

An arsonist using gasoline touches off a fire that destroys the home of George Klemm at 1043 Parkwood while Klemm is held in jail on manslaughter charges in the death of Anthony DeLuca, 26.

Twenty women receive degrees as members of the 28th graduation class of Hannah E. Mullins School of Practical Nursing in Salem.

1963: Danny Tobin, a 14-year-old freshman at Ursuline High School, falls through the ice in Mill Creek below the Ice House dam, but luckily comes up for air at the same spot and is pulled from the hole by a friend.

Four Youngstown University students set out from Central Square to complete a 50-mile hike to prove they could meet President Kennedy’s test for physical fitness, but Malcolm K. “Iron Mike” Milliron III is the only one to complete the hike, doing so in 17 Ω hours. The students picked the coldest night of the year to take their test.

Donald “Moosey” Caputo, former Youngstown bookie and operator of the Jungle Inn in the 1940s, is one of 11 men charged with operating a gambling casino at the Jockey Club near Chester, W. Va.

Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. lights another blast furnace, bringing district output to 51 percent of capacity with nine blast furnaces, 32 open hearths, a Bessemer plant and a basic oxygen converter in production.

1938: Lee Bradley, an asphalt salesman from Cleveland, tells Ohio Senate investigators that General Motors Corp. donated $25,000 to Gov. Martin Davey’s 1934 gubernatorial campaign with the understanding that the company would get half the state’s auto business.

Youngstown City Council will consider an ordinance authorizing the installation of 563 parking meters in the downtown area.

Citing a recently amended state law which holds police personally liable for damages while drive except when responding to an emergency call, Judge Harry Hoffman awards compensation to two men who said their cars were damaged by Youngstown Patrolman John Kralick while he was chasing a reckless driver.