YEARS AGO

Today is Monday, April 13, the 103rd day of 2015. There are 262 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1613: Pocahontas, daughter of Chief Powhatan, is captured by English Capt. Samuel Argall in the Virginia Colony. (During a yearlong captivity, Pocahontas converted to Christianity and ultimately opted to stay with the English. )

1861: At the start of the Civil War, Fort Sumter in South Carolina falls to Confederate forces.

1912: The Royal Flying Corps, a predecessor of Britain’s Royal Air Force, is created.

1943: President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicates the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., on the 200th anniversary of the third American president’s birth.

1958: Van Cliburn of the United States wins the first International Tchaikovsky Competition for piano in Moscow; Russian Valery Klimov wins the violin contest.

1964: Sidney Poitier becomes the first black performer in a leading role to win an Academy Award for his performance in “Lilies of the Field.” Patricia Neal is named best actress for “Hud”; best picture goes to “Tom Jones.”

1965: Sixteen-year-old Lawrence Wallace Bradford Jr. is appointed by New York Republican Jacob Javits to be the first black page of the U.S. Senate.

1970: Apollo 13, four-fifths of the way to the moon, is crippled when a tank containing liquid oxygen bursts. (The astronauts managed to return safely.)

1975: Francois Tombalbaye, Chad president, is killed in a military coup.

1986: Pope John Paul II visits the Great Synagogue of Rome in the first recorded papal visit of its kind to a Jewish house of worship.

1992: The Great Chicago Flood takes place as the city’s century-old tunnel system and adjacent basements fill with water from the Chicago River.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: The Ohio Department of Taxation instructs Mahoning County to collect nearly $100,000 in back personal property taxes that were allowed to accrue on United Youngstown Music, the vending-machine business operated by racke- teer Joseph Naples Jr.

A “Peace Quilt” designed by June Stahl of Canfield and hand-stitched by Canfield area seamstresses is delivered to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev by U.S. Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio.

Nick Cassimatis, a Hubbard High senior, is selected one of USA Today’s top 20 high school graduates for 1990, in recognition of his academic record and his writing a computer program for a science project that translates French sentences into English.

1975: Vindicator Business Editor George Reiss writes that emerging markets in the oil-rich Mideast are expected to create opportunities for Youngstown district iron and steel equipment firms. The Arab Iron and Steel Institute estimates that member countries will need 31 million to 40 million tons of iron and steel annually.

The Youngstown Rugby Club opens its third season against the Erie Rugby Club at Cochis Field, with the A squad winning 34-0 and the B squad losing 6-0.

More than 100 area Masons receive the 32nd degree at the 71st Reunion of the AASR, Valley of Youngstown, at the Youngstown Masonic Temple. Six men are presented 50-year pins: James W. Brown, Wilbur H. Conklin, Chester H. Steele, Joseph M. Stein Reed Stump and James F. McCurley.

1965: A string of devastating tornadoes sweeps across northern Ohio leaving 53 dead, 300 injured and damage estimated at $53 million.

The Youngstown Newspaper Guild votes to ratify an agreement ending a 34-week strike against the Youngstown Vindicator. Picketing will stop, and with all other groups having signed new contracts, normal production and distribution is expected by the weekend.

1940: The Court of Appeals will hear a mandamus action in which Judge Henry P. Beckenbach is seeking the restoration of $7,500 that Mahoning County commissioners cut from the juvenile court budget.

Winter-weary area motorists find their cars skidding perilously on ice-covered roads on the coldest April 13 on record, with temperatures dropping to 22 degrees overnight.

Stanley Walter Daum, North Jackson High School senior, places highest in the general scholarship test conducted in Mahoning County and its cities by the state Department of Education. Donald Williams of East High scored second and Robert W. Coy of Greenford and Robert A. Murray of East, tied for third place.