Today in history: Friday, Feb. 21

Today is Friday, Feb. 21, the 52nd day of 2014. There are 313 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1513: Pope Julius II, who had commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, dies nearly four months after the project was completed.

1613: Mikhail Romanov, 16, is unanimously chosen by Russia’s national assembly to be czar, beginning a dynasty that would last three centuries.

1862: Nathaniel Gordon becomes the first and only American slave-trader to be executed under the U.S. Piracy Law of 1820 as he was hanged in New York.

1885: The Washington Monument is dedicated.

1916: The World War I Battle of Verdun begins in France as German forces attack; the French are able to prevail after 10 months of fighting.

1925: The New Yorker magazine makes its debut.

1945: During the World War II Battle of Iwo Jima, the escort carrier USS Bismarck Sea is sunk by kamikazes with the loss of 318 men.

1947: Edwin H. Land publicly demonstrates his Polaroid Land camera, which can produce a black-and-white photograph in 60 seconds.

VINDICATOR FILES

1989: Cantar Corp. of Rexdale, Ontario, Canada, buys the old Moyer Co. building in Youngstown’s River Bend area for $605,000 and will convert it to a factory making plastic swimming pool covers.

Some downtown Youngs-town merchants are fighting the city’s plan to install a median strip on West Federal Street, saying it will impede the flow of traffic.

Mill Creek Park police will receive a 6 percent pay raise, bringing the hourly rate for full-time officers to a range of $8.15 to $11.15 per hour, depending on length of service.

1974: Two East Side churches and a North Side school are hit by vandals. St. Paul’s Healing Temple at 2757 McGuffey Road sustains $30,000 in damages, while damage was less severe at the Church of Spiritual Hope on Jacobs Road and McKinley Elementary School.

Columbiana County Common Pleas Judge J. Warren Bettis upholds the suspension of an East Liverpool patrolman for slapping around a traffic violator while off duty, finding that he had not identified himself as a police office and used excessive force.

Five hundred people, most of them volunteers at one time or another, attend the 50th anniversary dinner of the Lawrence County United Fund in New Castle.

1964: The population of Mahoning County has increased by 10,930 and Trumbull County by 15,508 since the federal census of 1960, the State Development Department estimates.

Mayor Anthony B. Flask names John Pletnik, traffic coordinator, to the long-vacant post of traction commissioner, responsible for analyzing the Youngstown Transit Co.’s monthly reports and taking complaints.

Herman Hudson, 53, Youngstown’s biggest bootlegger in the opinion of federal authorities, draws a three-year prison term in U.S. District Court in Cleveland after pleading guilty to possessing materials for making bootleg whisky.

1939: President Roosevelt recommends that final action on the Lake Erie-Ohio River canal be delayed pending an investigation by the Interstate Commerce Commission of rail rates in the waterway area with a view toward cutting rail rates.

The East Liverpool Chamber of Commerce is leading opposition to creation of a second Columbiana County common pleas judgeship by the state Legislature.

The Youngstown Board of Education awards three contracts to low bidders, all Youngstown firms, for construction of Covington School.