Years Ago

Today is Sunday, June 22, the 173rd day of 2014. There are 192 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1611: English explorer Henry Hudson, his son and several other people are set adrift in present-day Hudson Bay by mutineers aboard the Discovery; their fate remains unknown.

1870: The United States Department of Justice is created.

1911: Britain’s King George V is crowned at Westminster Abbey.

1937: Joe Louis begins his reign as world heavyweight boxing champion by knocking out Jim Braddock in the eighth round of their fight in Chicago.

1938: Joe Louis knocks out Max Schmeling in the first round of their rematch at Yankee Stadium.

1940: During World War II, Adolf Hitler gains a stunning victory as France is forced to sign an armistice eight days after German forces overran Paris.

1944: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, more popularly known as the “GI Bill of Rights.”

1964: In a pair of rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court decides that the Henry Miller novel “Tropic of Cancer” and the French film “The Lovers” are not obscene.

1977: John N. Mitchell becomes the first former U.S. attorney general to go to prison as he begins serving a sentence for his role in the Watergate cover-up. (He was released 19 months later.)

1992: The U.S. Supreme Court, in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, unanimously rules that “hate crime” laws that ban cross burning and similar expressions of racial bias violate free-speech rights.

2004: Islamic militants behead Kim Sun-il, a South Korean hostage who’d pleaded for his life in a heart-wrenching videotape; he is the third foreign hostage decapitated in the Middle East in little over a month.

2009: Nine people are killed when a Washington, D.C., commuter train crashes into the rear of another during afternoon rush hour.

Chris Brown pleads guilty to felony assault of ex-girlfriend Rihanna.

2013: Islamic militants disguised as policemen kill 10 foreign climbers and a Pakistani guide in a brazen overnight raid at the base camp of Nanga Parbat, saying it was to avenge the death of their deputy leader in a U.S. drone strike.

A plane carrying a wing walker crashes at an air show near Dayton, Ohio, killing both the pilot, Charlie Schwenker, and the stunt performer, Jane Wicker.

VINDICATOR FILES

1989: The Ohio Senate approves a bill sponsored by Sen. Richard Schafrath, R-Loudonville, to prohibit corporal punishment in Ohio public schools, except in districts that adopt formal policies permitting it.

About 80 Lockwood Village residents spend two hours berating Boardman Township trustees for failure to address flooding problems that have persisted for more than a decade.

A jury of six men and six women deliberate for three days before finding James B. Williams III, 18, guilty of voluntary manslaughter in the bludgeoning death of his stepmother, Diane Cramer, and not guilty in the deaths of his father, and 5-year-old half sister, Jennifer. He had been charged with three counts of murder in the deaths of his family in their North Jackson home.

1974: James P. Griffin, local and national labor leader, tells 1,041 graduates at Youngstown State University’s 52nd spring commencement that Americans must be vigilant in safeguarding their liberties, even if it means lowering their standard of living.

John Phillip Seltzer, son of the Rev. and Mrs. C. Phillip Seltzer of Austintown, is ordained into the ministry of the Lutheran Church in America.

City Asphalt and Paving submits a bid of $3.1 million for the rehabilitation of two main runways at Youngstown Municipal Airport. It is the only bid and is 6 percent above the engineer’s estimate.

1964: J.L. Mauthe of Poland, retired president and chairman of the board of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., and Roger W. Rowland of New Castle, Pa., president of New Castle Refractories, receive Distinguished Alumnus Medallions from Eric A. Walker, president of Pennsylvania State University.

Two Vindicator newspaper boys waiting for their Sunday editions, Nick and George Economus, 15 and 14, narrowly escape being struck by a car driven by a drunken driver that swerved over the curb where they had been sitting and struck a pole at Elm and Spring Streets.

“Charm of the Centuries,” an original production depicting costumes from the Egyptian era to the sensational ’60s, is presented by the Ursuline High School Thespian Society to a national audience of drama teachers and young performers at the National Dramatic Arts Conference at Indiana University.

1939: Youngstown is chosen to host at least 500 Odd Fellows in 1940 when the Ohio Grand Lodge, IOOF, holds its 108th annual convention in the city.

Gus Hall, executive secretary of the Communist Party in the 19th congressional district, will address a picnic by the Youngstown Second Ward branch of the Communist Party at Berkley Woods near Albert Street.

A new attendance record of 18,000 is set at The Vindicator’s “Kiddies’ Day” at Idora Park. Charles Deibel, Idora president, estimated that 5,000 boys and girls jammed the dance pavilion to jitterbug to the music of Tiny Hill and his orchestra.