Years Ago

Today is Saturday, June 7, the 158th day of 2014. 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.

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 upholds “separate but equal” racial segregation, which it overturned in 1954.)

1929: The sovereign state of Vatican City comes into existence as copies of the Lateran Treaty are exchanged in Rome.

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

1967: The Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic opens in San Francisco.

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.

1984: The occult comedy “Ghostbusters,” released by Columbia Pictures, has its world premiere in Westwood, Calif.

1998: 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.

2004: A steady, near-silent stream of people circles through the rotunda of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., where the body of the nation’s 40th president lies in repose before traveling to Washington for a state funeral.

2013: President Barack Obama vigorously defends the government’s just-disclosed collection of massive amounts of information from phone and Internet records as a necessary defense against terrorism, and assures Americans, “Nobody is listening to your telephone calls.”

VINDICATOR FILES

1989: Poland Village Council votes 6-0 to enact a 0.5-percent income tax following the defeat of a 6-mill property tax increase on the May ballot.

Southern Park Mall patrons who ride the bus aren’t happy about their new long walk from a bus stop to the mall doors after mall officials ask the WRTA to drop off and pick up customers along the outer parking lot drive.

The Chicago Sun Times names Charles T. Price, former chief labor attorney for The Vindicator, as its publisher.

1974: For the second time in less than a year, Youngstown police crack down on the numbers operations of Joey Naples, conducting a series of raids and arresting four men.

The owner of a Belmont Avenue market is in city jail after shooting a customer, Anthony Blanshaw, 22, in the chest during an argument over prices.

A Youngstown police sergeant and two patrolmen are arrested on criminal charges arising from an internal investigation into police involvement in city burglaries. Police Chief Donald Baker says a number of other policemen face internal discipline.

1964: David L. Lawrence, former governor of Pennsylvania, will be the keynote speaker at the annual conference of the Tri-State Zionist Region at the Voyager Motor Inn.

Each person receiving a free chest X-Ray provided by the Mahoning County Tuberculosis and Health Association at the No. 2 fire station on Youngstown’s East Side will receive a coupon good for two McDonald’s hamburgers.

Coming to Stambaugh Auditorium for the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Department’s 3rd annual benefit show: the Grand Ole Opry, starring Hank Williams Jr. and Tex Ritter.

1939: Poland Seminary High School, remodeled in a colonial architectural style by the school district and WPA at a cost of $250,000, will be open to the public during dedication ceremonies June 10.

James Mitchell, also known as James Limberpoulos, is identified during a deposition in the lawsuit against numbers operators as the man who ran the “Big House” which grossed more than $100,000 a year in bets.

One of Columbiana’s oldest buildings, the 70-year-old Opera House on Vine Street, is condemned by the state fire marshal and will be razed.