YEARS AGO

Today is Friday, Oct. 17, the 290th day of 2014. There are 75 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1610: French King Louis XIII, age 9, is crowned at Reims, five months after the assassination of his father, Henry IV.

1777: British forces under Gen. John Burgoyne surrender to American troops in Saratoga, N.Y., in a turning point of the Revolutionary War.

1807: Britain declares it will continue to reclaim British-born sailors from American ships and ports regardless of whether they hold U.S. citizenship.

1814: The London Beer Flood inundates the St. Giles district of the British capital as a vat at Meux’s Brewery on Tottenham Court Road ruptures, causing other vats to burst as well and sending more than 320,000 gallons of beer into the streets; up to nine people are reported killed.

1919: Radio Corp. of America is chartered.

1931: Mobster Al Capone is convicted of income tax evasion. (Sentenced to 11 years in prison, Capone was released in 1939.)

VINDICATOR FILES

1989: Al Alli, president of United Auto Workers Local 1112, says workers at the Lordstown General Motors van plant, which is being shut down, will be transferred to Flint, Mich., or will be placed in a job bank, where they will receive 40 hours of pay per week until other jobs open up.

Bill Ifft, a history teacher at Edison Junior High in Niles, is credited with saving the life of a seventh grader who fell beneath the trailer of a moving truck near the school. Michael Gray slid on his bicycle beneath the truck, and Ifft pulled him to safety as the bicycle was crushed.

Student government representatives at Youngstown State University ask the school administration to repeal its ban on smoking for one year and to improve ventilation systems so that smoking zones can be established.

1974: Seven youths housed in the Juvenile Research Center on Oak Hill Avenue escape by climbing out a window. One returns voluntarily, and five others are recaptured, but one remains at large.

Carl Robinson, 34, of 137 Willis Ave., is shot to death after arguing with another patron at Wragg’s Tiki Lounge, 910 Market St.

Niles City Council renews its attack on the Ohio Edison Co.’s Belmont Avenue Extension plant, charging it violates Ohio EPA regulations by failing to reduce “fly ash” emissions from its coal-burning plant.

1964: John A. Saunders, president of General Fireproofing Co. of Youngstown, says that Rockwell-Standard Corp. of Pittsburgh has given GF an option to acquire 121,558 shares of GF par value $5 stock.

The board of directors of the Cleveland Indians decides to keep the American League franchise in Cleveland, where it has been since the league was formed in 1901 for at least 10 more years.

1939: A snapshot of two boys repairing a coaster wagon that was entered by Mrs. Herbert Burns, 153 Wilson St., Struthers, through The Youngstown Vindicator, wins honorable mention and $50 in the Fifth Annual Newspaper National Snapshots Awards.

John W. Powers, mayoral candidate, says that if he cannot find a man for chief of police in Youngstown who is not beholden to other interests, he will “go out of town to get one.”