Years Ago
Today is Thursday, April 24, the 114th day of 2014. There are 251 days left in the year.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
On this date in:
1898: Spain declares war on the United States. (The United States responds in kind the next day.)
1913: The 792-foot Woolworth Building, at that time the tallest skyscraper in the world, officially opens in Manhattan as President Woodrow Wilson presses a button at the White House to signal the lighting of the towering structure.
1915: What’s regarded as the start of the Armenian genocide begins as the Ottoman Empire rounds up Armenian political and cultural leaders in Constantinople.
1916: Some 1,600 Irish nationalists launch the Easter Rising by seizing several key sites in Dublin. (The rising is put down by British forces almost a week later.)
1932: In the Free State of Prussia, the Nazi Party gains a plurality of seats in parliamentary elections.
1953: British statesman Winston Churchill is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.
1962: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology achieves the first satellite relay of a television signal, using NASA’s Echo 1 balloon satellite to bounce a video image from Camp Parks, Calif., to Westford, Mass.
1970: The People’s Republic of China launches its first satellite, which keeps transmitting a song, “The East Is Red.”
1974: Comedian Bud Abbott, 78, dies in Woodland Hills, Calif.
1980: The United States launches an unsuccessful attempt to free the American hostages in Iran, a mission that results in the deaths of eight U.S. servicemen.
1990: The space shuttle Discovery blasts off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., carrying the $1.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope.
VINDICATOR FILES
1989: Warren police are warning that the influx of cocaine poses a real danger to teenagers because it is relatively inexpensive but highly addictive.
Dr. Yuzuru Takeshita, a professor of population planning at the University of Michigan, tells Lordstown High School students about his experience as a teenager confined to a U.S. detention camp during World War II because he was Japanese-American.
Parents fighting to save Villa Maria High School ask the Sisters of Humility of Mary to consider leasing the building to them for the 1989-90 school year, after which they would find a new site.
1974: A 21-year-old Carroll Street man is arrested after a police chase through yards and streets in the assault of Mrs. Severine Cardarelli and the theft of her purse.
Ground is broken for the last stretch of I-680, which will stretch from Route 224 to the Ohio Turnpike. The work will cost $10 million and be done by Acme Construction Co. of Cleveland and James A. Soda Co. of Niles.
Youngstown YMCA Neptune Swim team members are taking part in the 49th YMCA National Swimming and Diving Tournament in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Coach Rob Johnston’s team includes John Foust, Martha Wright, John Dickmann, Debbie Kness, Becky Cooper, Pet Gelhaar, Jill Ridinger, Sally Fithian and Linda Sweeney.
1964: Alfred B. Lewis, national treasurer for the NAACP, speaking at a meeting of the Youngstown Chapter at Third Baptist Church, attacks FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover for his insinuations that Communists are influencing the civil rights movement.
An investigation by FBI agents into an interstate football pool operation leads to the indictment of two Wellsville brothers, Anthony and Benjamin Corbisello.
Sharon Steel Corp. reports it earned $317,000 on sales of $34.6 million in the first quarter of 1964.
1939: Dr. Levi G. Batlman, leading Protestant churchman in the Mahoning Valley for more than a quarter century and leader in the dry movement, dies in North Side Hospital after an operation from which he did not rally. He was 70.
Youngstown lottery, horse betting and vice interest have two days to “clean up their business or get the hell out of town” or the police department will do it for them, Mayor Lionel Evans says during a conference with Police Chief Carl L. Olson.
Givah Wisler of Leetonia, a sophomore, is chosen maid of honor to the queen of the interfraternity dance at Whittenberg College.