Years Ago

Today is Good Friday, April 18, the 108th day of 2014. There are 257 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1775: Paul Revere begins his famous ride from Charlestown to Lexington, Mass., warning American colonists that the British are coming.

1831: The University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa officially opens.

1906: A devastating earthquake strikes San Francisco, followed by raging fires; estimates of the final death toll range between 3,000 and 6,000.

1923: The first game is played at the original Yankee Stadium in New York; the Yankees defeat the Boston Red Sox 4-1.

1942: An air squadron from the USS Hornet led by Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle raids Tokyo and other Japanese cities.

1944: The ballet “Fancy Free,” with music by Leonard Bernstein and choreography by Jerome Robbins, premieres in New York.

1949: The Republic of Ireland is proclaimed.

1954: Gamal Abdel Nasser seizes power as he becomes prime minister of Egypt.

1955: Physicist Albert Einstein dies in Princeton, N.J., at age 76.

1964: Hollywood screenwriter Ben Hecht, 70, dies in New York.

1978: The Senate approves the Panama Canal Treaty, providing for the complete turnover of control of the waterway to Panama on the last day of 1999.

1983: Sixty-three people, including 17 Americans, are killed at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, by a suicide bomber.

2004: Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero orders a withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq just hours after his government is sworn in, fulfilling a campaign pledge and trying to calm his uneasy nation after bombings that killed 191 people in Madrid.

2009: President Barack Obama offers a spirit of cooperation to America’s hemispheric neighbors at the Summit of the Americas in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad.

The White House says President Barack Obama is “deeply disappointed” at news Iran has convicted American journalist Roxana Saberi of spying for the United States and sentenced her to eight years in prison. (Saberi was released on appeal the following month.)

Emma Hendrickson, a 100-year-old great-great-grandmother from Morris Plains, N.J., becomes the oldest competitor in the history of the United States Bowling Congress Women’s Championships, rolling a 115, 97 and 106 for a 318 series during team competition at the National Bowling Stadium in Reno. (Hendrickson died in February 2012 at age 102.)

2013: A Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus police officer, Sean Collier, is shot to death while sitting in his cruiser; authorities said he was killed by two brothers suspected in the deadly Boston Marathon bombing.

VINDICATOR FILES

1989: Ohio Gov. Richard Celeste says he is disappointed that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal government can send national guard troops on peacetime training missions over the objections of a state’s governor.

U.S. Rep. James A Traficant Jr., D-Poland, comes to the defense of embattled House Speaker James Wright, saying “Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman are rolling over in their graves when a few dissidents are able to attack a powerful and great Speaker of the House.”

The measles outbreak among Youngstown area young people is threatening to curtail sharply the blood supply, and the American Red Cross is asking adult donors to fill the void in blood drives.

1974: H. Marvin Wilds, superintendent of Liberty schools for 12 years, submits his resignation, stating in his letter that “at least a majority of the board thinks I have been too innovative in the area of curriculum.”

A controversial proposal to have the city take over Mill Creek Park operations is defeated by a 5-2 vote of Youngstown City Council.

An effort by Councilman Jerome McNally, D-1st, to repeal Youngstown’s $5 motor vehicle license tax fails on a 4-3 party-line vote.

1964: Maintaining he is innocent of pistol whipping Rhoda Pinciaro, Charles Carabbia, Struthers gambler, says he will appeal his conviction and one-to-five year prison sentence. He is free on $10,000 bond pending appeal.

A $100,000 fire destroys the George Thomas ice cream cone factory on Irvine Street in Sharon.

Louis Lev and Sons is duplicating the Formica World’s Fair Home using plastic laminates on walls, doors, kitchen cabinets and bathtub enclosures. It is being built on Forest Green off S. Raccoon Road.

1939: Several thousand men, women and children attending the Indoor Circus at the Rayen-Wood Auditorium see aerialist Clayton Beehee miss a trapeze 25 feet in the air and hit the net with such forced that it sagged to the hardwood floor, knocking him unconscious.

Youngstown City Council votes to do away with horses on the police force as an economy move. At the maintenance cost of $75 a month, horses are more expensive than cruiser cars.

United Engineering & Foundry Co., which has manufactured much modern steel mill equipment for Japan, will move its big machine shop from Wooster to Japan, says company President George T. Ladd.