YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

Today is Sunday, Oct. 19, the 292nd day of 2014. There are 73 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1781: British troops led by Gen. Lord Cornwallis surrender at Yorktown, Va., as the American Revolution nears its end.

1789: John Jay is sworn in as the first chief justice of the United States.

1814: The first documented public performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” takes place at the Holliday Street Theater in Baltimore, where it is performed by an actor now known only as “Mr. Hardinge.”

1864: Confederate Lt. Gen. Jubal A. Early’s soldiers attack Union forces at Cedar Creek, Va.; the Union troops are able to rally and defeat the Confederates.

1944: The U.S. Navy begins accepting black women into WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service).

The play “I Remember Mama,” by John Van Druten, opens at the Music Box Theater on Broadway.

1951: President Harry S. Truman signs an act formally ending the state of war with Germany.

1960: The United States begins a limited embargo against Cuba covering all commodities except medical supplies and certain food products.

1977: The supersonic Concorde makes its first landing in New York City.

1984: Rev. Jerzy Popieluszko, a Polish Catholic priest with ties to the Solidarity labor movement, is abducted and murdered by communist secret police.

1987: The stock market crashes as the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunges 508 points, or 22.6 percent in value, to close at 1,738.74.

1989: A British court frees the “Guildford Four” who had been wrongly convicted of an Irish Republican Army bombing.

1994: Twenty-two people are killed as a terrorist bomb shatters a bus in the heart of Tel Aviv.

Entertainer Martha Raye dies in Los Angeles at 78.

2004: Insurgents in Iraq abduct Margaret Hassan, the local director of CARE International. (Hassan is believed to have been slain by her captors a month later; her body has never been found.)

Thirteen people are killed when a Corporate Airlines commuter turboprop crashes in northeast Missouri (two people survived with serious injuries).

Former arms control adviser Paul H. Nitze dies in Washington, D.C. at age 97.

2009: The Justice Department issues a new policy memo, telling prosecutors that pot-smoking patients or their sanctioned suppliers should not be targeted for federal prosecution in states that allow medical marijuana.

Actor Joseph Wiseman, 91, who played the sinister Dr. No in the first James Bond feature film, dies in New York City.

Mass killer Howard Unruh, who took 13 lives during a 1949 rampage in Camden, N.J., dies in a Trenton nursing facility at age 88.

VINDICATOR FILE

1989: Ohio House Speaker Vern Riffe announces the appointment of a Select House Committee to Study Drug Abuse and appoints Rep. John Stivers, D- Columbiana, to head it.

Pennsylvania authorities say they are prepared to drop murder and conspiracy charges against Edward and Michael Swiger in the killing of Robert Pratt of Munhall, Pa., as soon as Ohio authorities are ready to take the two into custody.

Youngstown Municipal Airport’s future may well be decided by what happens in Albany, N.Y., where Albany County is seeking FAA approval to sell the airport to private investors.

1974: Patty Woods is named Leetonia High School’s homecoming queen, succeeding three sisters who have also been queens, Mary in 1960, Peggy in 1970 and Cheryl in 1971.

A 55-year-old Toledo man who aided John Glenn, Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, by opening a Spanish-speaking campaign headquarters on Oak Street in Youngstown is being sought for bilking at least $65,000 from Glenn supporters.

Six South Side United Presbyterian churches — Brownlee Woods, Christ, Foster Memorial, Gibson Heights, John Knox and Pleasant Grove — will hold a joint worship service.

1964: David J. McDonald, president of the United Steel Workers of America, says the proposed Lake Erie-to-Ohio River canal must be built if Youngstown is to remain competitive in the steel business.

The Republican Party formally demands free equal time on the three major television networks to respond to President Lyndon Johnson’s radio-television address on the new Soviet government and Red China’s explosion of a nuclear device.

Fred B. King Jr., Youngs-town funeral director, is named a divisional trustee of the Ohio Chapter of the American Cancer Society.

1939: Atty. John W. Powers charges that “at least three Republican mayoral candidates” are being kept in the race to aid the candidacy of William B. Spagnola.

The 14-16 inch bar mill of Republic Steel Corp. suspends production after a fire damages the No. 4 boiler at the blast furnaces at Haselton.

The head of a sandy-haired young man is found in an empty gondola car on a siding near New Castle, Pa. It is believed the head belongs to a torso found in a swamp near West Pittsburg in Lawrence County.