YEARS AGO

Today is Tuesday, Feb. 3, the 34th day of 2015. There are 331 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1865: President Abraham Lincoln and Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens hold a shipboard peace conference off the Virginia coast; the talks deadlock over the issue of Southern autonomy.

1913: The 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, providing for a federal income tax, is ratified.

1924: The 28th president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, dies in Washington, D.C., at age 67.

1930: The chief justice of the United States, William Howard Taft, resigns for health reasons. (He dies just over a month later.)

1943: During World War II, the U.S. transport ship Dorchester, which was carrying troops to Greenland, sinks after being hit by a German torpedo; of the more than 900 men aboard, only some 230 survive.

1959: Rock ’n’ roll stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson die in a small plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa.

An American Airlines Lockheed Electra crashes into New York City’s East River, killing 65 of the 73 people on board.

1966: The Soviet probe Luna 9 becomes the first manmade object to make a soft landing on the moon.

1969: “Candid Camera” creator Allen Funt and his family are aboard an Eastern Airlines flight hijacked to Cuba. (Fellow passengers who recognized Funt thought the whole thing was a stunt for his TV show; in an article written for The Associated Press, Funt said the whole episode “looked like a bad movie.”)

1972: The XI Olympic Winter Games open in Sapporo, Japan.

1989: Alfredo Stroessner, president of Paraguay for more than three decades, is overthrown in a military coup.

1994: The space shuttle Discovery lifts off, carrying Sergei Krikalev, the first Russian cosmonaut to fly aboard a U.S. spacecraft.

1998: Texas executes Karla Faye Tucker, 38, for the pickax killings of two people in 1983; she was the first woman executed in the United States since 1984.

A U.S. Marine plane slices through the cable of a ski gondola in Italy, sending the car plunging hundreds of feet, killing all 20 people inside.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: Sharp layoffs in the automobile business drive Ohio’s unemployment rate from 6.1 percent in December to 6.7 percent in January.

Ohio Secretary of State Sherrod Brown’s office will investigate claims that Youngstown-area canvassers forged signatures on petitions seeking to place a state referendum on casino gambling on the ballot.

The Ohio Historical Site Preservation Advisory Board recommends two areas of Youngstown’s North Side for the National Register of Historic Places, one in the Crandall Park area and one in the Wick Park area.

1975: The Mahoning County Sheriff’s Department releases an artist’s rendering of a man seen driving the car that was stolen from the Canfield home of Benjamin Marsh after Marsh, his wife and daughter were murdered. The man is described as 5 feet 11 inches tall, medium build, dark hair and about 45 years old.

Jewelry, televisions and a mink coat valued at $16,532 are taken from the home of Mrs. Billie J. Swain, 5119 Viola Drive, Austintown, by burglars who forced open a sliding glass door.

Eight people in one Texas house die while attempting to flee fumes released from an experimental injection well in which gas rather than water was being used to extract more oil. An Atlantic-Richfield employee sent to check on the leak also died.

1965: Youngstown University’s basketball team reaches 12th place among small colleges in the United Press International poll after its win over the fourth-ranked Philadelphia Textiles.

A cold wave grips much of the United States with a 34-below-zero reading in Iowa and temperatures in Florida falling by 2 degrees an hour, threatening citrus crops.

1940: The new $35,000 Our Lady of Lourdes Church erected at East Main and James streets in East Palestine is dedicated.

Youngstown hospitals are at near capacity, and officials are asking friends and relatives to refrain from visiting patients except in emergencies.

Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. announces a profit of $5 million in 1939, equal to $2.98 a common share.