YEARS AGO

Today is Friday, Oct. 31, the 304th day of 2014. There are 61 days left in the year. This is Halloween.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1517: Martin Luther posts his 95 Theses on the door of the Wittenberg Palace church, marking the start of the Protestant Reformation in Germany.

1795: English poet John Keats is born in London.

1864: Nevada becomes the 36th state as President Abraham Lincoln signs a proclamation.

1887: Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek is born in Zhejiang Province.

1926: Magician Harry Houdini dies in Detroit of gangrene and peritonitis resulting from a ruptured appendix.

1941: The Navy destroyer USS Reuben James is torpedoed by a German U-boat off Iceland with the loss of some 100 lives, even though the United States had not yet entered World War II.

Work is completed on the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota, begun in 1927.

1959: A U.S. Marine reservist shows up at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow to declare he was renouncing his American citizenship so he could live in the Soviet Union. His name: Lee Harvey Oswald.

1961: The body of Josef Stalin is removed from Lenin’s Tomb as part of the Soviet Union’s “de-Stalinization” drive.

1964: Theodore C. Freeman, 34, becomes the first member of NASA’s astronaut corps to die when his T-38 jet crashes while approaching Ellington Air Force Base in Houston.

VINDICATOR FILES

1989: The Mahoning County Community Corrections Planning Board meets to plan an alternative jail for drunken drivers.

Mahoning-Trumbull Air Pollution Control Agency issues a stop-work order of the renovation of the Bell-Park Professional Building because it said some friable asbestos there has been disturbed.

Dr. Frank Weldele, an audiologist, is installed as president of the Burdman Group Inc., a nonprofit social service agency serving the emotionally disabled through residential and vocational rehabilitation programs.

1974: Youngstown Councilman William W. Wade, R-5th, says he will lead a campaign to eliminate further city contributions to the Youngstown Symphony Center if the play “Hair” is presented at the center.

Youngstown GOP Mayor Jack C. Hunter asks Congress to declare Republicans an endangered species and make it a crime to turn them out of office. U.S. Rep. Charles J. Carney says, “The mayor’s comments were made in jest, but I can understand his feelings.”

1964: Pasquale Valicenti, 87, of Arch Street, is fatally injured when struck by a car at Wick and Rayen avenues. He was walking to the Erie Terminal to welcome his grandson from Italy, whom he had never seen.

The Neapolitan Society of Mahoning and Trumbull counties celebrates its 30th anniversary with a dinner dance at the Mural Room. Vincent Delle Fave is president of the organization.

1939: A Republic Steel Corp. spokesman announces plans for immediate construction of a second Fretz-Moon type continuous gas butt-weld furnace in Youngstown.

Sydney R. Montague, who has done horse patrol work in the Canadian Rockies and the Arctic, speaks on “The Truth About the Mounties” to the Mahoning Valley Foreman’s Association.

Canfield’s new $180,000 high school will be dedicated with two principal speakers, Edward N. Dietrich, state director of education, and J.O. Engleman, former president of Kent State University.