YEARS AGO

Today is Wednesday, April 15, the 105th day of 2015. There are 260 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1865: President Abraham Lincoln dies nine hours after being shot the night before by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater in Washington; Andrew Johnson becomes the nation’s 17th president.

1715: The Yamasee War begins as members of the Yamasee tribe attack English settlers in colonial South Carolina.

1850: The city of San Francisco is incorporated.

1912: The British luxury liner RMS Titanic founders in the North Atlantic off Newfoundland more than 21/2 hours after hitting an iceberg; 1,514 people die, while less than half as many survive.

1945: During World War II, British and Canadian troops liberate the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had died on April 12, is buried at the Roosevelt family home in Hyde Park, N.Y.

1955: Ray Kroc opens the first franchised McDonald’s restaurant in Des Plaines, Ill.

1960: A three-day conference to form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee begins at Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C. (The group’s first chairman was Marion Barry.)

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: The two-year legal battle by black Mahoning County residents to force a reconfiguration of the 52nd and 53rd state representative districts finds support from the Republican National Committee and the Ohio Republican Party, which say they want to file friend-of-the- court briefs in the case.

Warren police report an increase in reports by women who say they were attacked by strangers in or near their homes.

Battalion Chief Homer S. Whittenberger, who joined the Youngstown Fire Department in 1930, not long after the transition from horse-drawn to motorized fire fighting equipment, is retiring at the age of 81. His starting pay was $150 a month, he retired at an annual salary of $34,923.

1975: An arson fire destroys a discotheque, The Apartment, on Midlothian Boulevard, six weeks after an unsuccessful attempt to torch the night spot. Damage is estimated at $100,000. The club had been “closed for remodeling.”

About 2,000 furloughed workers are back on the job at the General Motors Corp.’s Lordstown complex as preparations are made to start a second shift on the Vega/ Astre assembly line, which produces about 85 cars and hour. The workforce at the plant is back above 10,000.

The Akron Coca-Cola Bottling Co. announces the purchase for an undisclosed amount of the Youngstown-Warren Coca-Cola Bottling Co., which holds the Coke and Canada Dry franchises for Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties.

1965: H.W. Divilbiss of Arlene Avenue has a rare newspaper framed and hanging in his living room. It is the April 15, 1865, edition of the New York Herald reporting the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Nearly 1,000 people attend the concelebration of the Mass of the Holy Chrism by 12 monsignori and Auxiliary Bishop James W. Malone, held for the first time in the new St. Columba Cathedral.

James A. Roemer will retire as an officer of the Sharon Steel Corp. after 33 years. He was founder of Niles Rolling Mill Co. and president of Mallory-Sharon Titanium Corp. of Niles. He and his wife are building a retirement home in Warren.

1940: Paul A. Sanderson, 27, widely known aeronautical engineer from Mineral Ridge, is fatally injured in a collision of two gliders near Bakersfield, Calif., where Sanderson was employed by Lockheed Aircraft Corp.

Blue Barron brings his famous orchestra and entertainers from New York’s Hotel Edison to the Elms Ballroom for a one-night engagement.