Saturday, February 14, 2015
Today is Saturday, Feb. 14, the 45th day of 2015. There are 320 days left in the year. This is Valentine’s Day.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
On this date in:
1778: The American ship Ranger carries the recently adopted Stars and Stripes to a foreign port for the first time as it arrives in France.
1895: Oscar Wilde’s final play, “The Importance of Being Earnest,” opens at the St. James’ Theatre in London.
1903: The Department of Commerce and Labor is established. (It was divided into separate departments of Commerce and Labor in 1913.)
1912: Arizona becomes the 48th state of the Union as President William Howard Taft signs a proclamation.
1924: The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co. of New York is formally renamed International Business Machines Corp., or IBM.
1929: The “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” takes place in a Chicago garage as seven rivals of Al Capone’s gang are gunned down.
1945: During World War II, British and Canadian forces reach the Rhine River in Germany.
1962: First lady Jacqueline Kennedy conducts a televised tour of the White House in a videotaped special that is broadcast on CBS and NBC (and several nights later on ABC).
1975: Author P.G. Wodehouse, 93, dies in Southampton, N.Y.
1985: Cable News Network reporter Jeremy Levin, held hostage by extremists in Lebanon, escapes from his captors.
Whitney Houston’s debut album, titled “Whitney Houston,” is released by Arista Records.
1989: Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini calls on Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie, author of “The Satanic Verses,” a novel condemned as blasphemous.
2005: Former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri is assassinated with explosives.
A gas explosion inside a Chinese mine kills 214 people.
President George W. Bush says he would nominate Lester M. Crawford as head of the Food and Drug Administration, a position Crawford had held as acting commissioner for nearly a year.
The creators of the video-sharing website YouTube activate its domain name, www.youtube.com (the site uploads its first video the following April.)
2013: Paralympic superstar Oscar Pistorius is charged with murdering his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, at his home in South Africa; he was later convicted of culpable homicide and sentenced to five years in jail.
2014: Drawing a link between climate change and California’s drought, President Barack Obama says the U.S. has to stop thinking of water as a “zero-sum” game and needs to do a better job of figuring out how to make sure everyone’s water needs are satisfied.
An attempt by the United Auto Workers to organize employees at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., falls short in a 712-626 vote.
VINDICATOR FILES
1990: Youngstown State University Student Government President Bryan Fry calls for a forum on enforcement of the smoking ban at the university because the trustees have not hired student monitors to enforce the program as they said they would.
Youngstown area veterans and U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. are seeking a Veterans Administration satellite clinic in the city to reduce the necessity of having to drive to hospitals in Cleveland or Butler.
Habitat for Humanity of Mahoning County, organized about a year ago as a Christian housing ministry, is ready to launch its first project, building a house for a needy family.
1975: Striking Youngstown Hospital Association nurses reach a tentative agreement, ending a 53-day strike that hobbled operations at North Side and South Side hospitals.
Nineteen employees of Trumbull County Treasurer Carl Lupi who were fired by Lupi resume work under an order issued by visiting Judge Dominick Olivito, a Jefferson County jurist.
Warren police are holding a 34-year-old woman for tying up Nedra Donaldson and her 5-year-old daughter and setting Donaldson’s Kenilworth SE apartment on fire. The cord binding Donaldson was loose, allowing her and her daughter to escape serious injury.
1965: Trustees of the Youngstown Hospital Association create the position of trustee emeritus and name William F. Maag Jr., editor and publisher of The Youngstown Vindicator, as the first to be so honored. William J. Brown, vice president and general manager of The Vindicator, is elected to the board.
Mrs. Barnard Steinfield of Poland, widely known for antiques and as the column writer “Aunt Teek” in the Farm and Dairy, dies at South Side Hospital.
1940: Ted G. Kearns is appointed first assistant fire chief, and Battalion Chief Frank L. Quinn is named second assistant chief by Mayor William Spagnola.
Youngstown’s three major “bug” outfits tell their clients that they are reducing from 500-to-1 to 300-to-1 returns on all combinations of 16, which are popular numbers, in a move to prevent further heavy losses.
East Liverpool City Council authorizes the hiring of four to six additional firemen at a monthly wage of $140 each.