Years Ago

Today is Tuesday, Feb. 4, the 35th day of 2014. There are 330 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1783:Britain’s King George III proclaims a formal cessation of hostilities in the American Revolutionary War.

1789: Electors choose George Washington to be the first president of the United States.

1861: Delegates from six southern states that had recently seceded from the Union meet in Montgomery, Ala., to form the Confederate States of America.

1919: Congress establishes the U.S. Navy Distinguished Service Medal and the Navy Cross.

1932: New York Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt opens the Winter Olympic Games at Lake Placid.

1941: The United Service Organizations (USO) comes into existence.

1944: The Bronze Star Medal, honoring “heroic or meritorious achievement or service,” is authorized by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

1962: St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is founded in Memphis, Tenn., by entertainer Danny Thomas.

1974: Newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, 19, is kidnapped in Berkeley, Calif., by the radical Symbionese Liberation Army.

VINDICATOR FILES

1989: U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr., D-17th, insists that Mahoning County’s chances of landing the $40 million Peter J. Schmitt Co. distribution center are threatened because the county may be unable to offer the tax incentives it had laid out.

Tommy Lasorda, manager of the World Champion Los Angeles Dodgers is recognized as “Man of the Year” at the 12th annual Sandalini Sports Banquet. Surprise guests were Eddie J. DeBartolo, owner of the Super Bowl champion San Francisco 49ers and players, including Joe Montana, Jerry Rice and Roger Craig.

Trumbull County Common Pleas Judge Robert A. Nader rejects petitions submitted to the court by a group calling itself “A Better Community” seeking the removal of Brookfield Trustees Gene Kirila and John Madasz and Clerk Edward Manion.

1974: Some 350 men of the Ohio National Guard’s 437th Military Police Battalion headquartered in Youngstown are among 900 Guardsmen called up to patrol Northeastern Ohio highways to prevent violence against working truck drivers during the independent truckers strike.

Actor George Hamilton and his wife, Alana Collins, star in “Paisley Convertible” at the Carousel Dinner Theater in Ravenna.

Girard Mayor Joseph Masternick appoints two new policemen, Rickard Watts, 26, and Kenneth Phillips, 28.

1964: The Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. fills orders for $285,859 worth of tinplate sold to Turkey with financing by the Agency for International Development.

Atty. John Kerensky, chief counsel for the Youngstown Humane Society, says a trucker cannot be held legally liable for the starvation death of several hogs after his truck became disbled at the Route 7 Turnpike interchange and repairs took longer than expected because of a snow storm in mid-January.

The General American Transportation Corp.’s Masury plant wins a $3 million contract for 197 insulated railroad cars that will be used to haul sugar.

1939: Angeline Maravelo, 22, confesses to shooting Michael S. Rich, 23, member of a prominent Hillsville, Pa., family, telling Lawrence County authorities, “I was good enough to work and scrub for them, but I wasn’t good enough to marry one of them.”

Streetcar motorman Clifton C. Sowell is credited with saving the lives of Donna Jean Boyle, 6; and her sister, Margaret, 8, of Campbell by slamming on the brakes when the girls fell in front of the car on Jackson Street. The girls were running from Sacred Heart School to catch the streetcar when they fell.

The Ohio College of Chiropody quintet defeat Coach Ray Sweeney’s Youngstown College five, 25-23, in a close basketball game in Cleveland. The Penguins will next play Thiel.