Years ago

Today is Friday, June 7, the 158th day of 2013. There are 207 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1769: Frontiersman Daniel Boone first begins to explore present-day Kentucky.

1862: William Bruce Mumford, a Confederate loyalist, is hanged at the order of Union military authorities for tearing down a U.S. flag that had been flying over the New Orleans mint shortly before the city was occupied by the North.

1892: Homer Plessy, a “Creole of color,” is fined for refusing to leave a whites-only car of the East Louisiana Railroad. (Ruling on his case, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld “separate but equal” racial segregation, which it overturned in 1954.)

1942: The World War II Battle of Midway ends in a decisive victory for American forces over the Imperial Japanese.

1972: The musical “Grease” opens on Broadway, having already been performed in lower Manhattan.

1981: Israeli military planes destroy a nuclear power plant in Iraq, a facility the Israelis charged could have been used to make nuclear weapons.

1998: In a crime that shocks the nation, James Byrd Jr., a 49-year-old black man, is hooked by a chain to a pickup truck and dragged to his death in Jasper, Texas. (Two white men were later sentenced to death for the crime; a third received life with the possibility of parole.)

VINDICATOR FILES

1988: Sovereign Circuits President Peter Mitchell conducts open house tours of the new company that manufactures circuit boards at its North Jackson plant.

Youngstown Mayor Patrick Ungaro says he supports the state’s choice of a Warren site for a new Ohio prison, declining to join Trumbull County residents who are opposed to the prison and wanted Ungaro’s support.

Boardman Township trustees are moving toward adding 12 new police officers to the force with money from a 2.8-mill levy passed in May.

1973: The attention of educators from across the state is focused on Warren City Schools where its “world of work” program is designed to help students from kindergarten through graduation make life and career choices.

Youngstown School Board President McCullough Williams refuses to allow George Phillips, president of Public School Employees Local 1143, speak at a board of education meeting because Phillips had not filed a request to speak a week before the meeting, as board policy requires.

1963: A Trumbull County jury finds Anthony Gianfrancesco, 41, guilty of promoting a numbers game. He was one of four men arrested in a crackdown at North Side Hospital in Youngstown. The other three entered guilty pleas.

Lightning strikes the l50-foot chimney on Salem Junior High School causing damage that may exceed $5,000.

1938: The Struthers Board of Education rehires 94 teachers but discards the automatic pay increases for all of them. Teachers making less than $1,500 will receive 5 percent raises; those making more will get no raise.

“The Greatest Show on Earth,” the Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus, will not play Youngstown in 1938, but will make stops in Dayton, Columbus and Toledo.

Youngstown Police Chief Carl L. Olson says he will take action against the owners and rental agents of property that is used for gambling purposes.