YEARS AGO

Today is Sunday, Feb. 15, the 46th day of 2015. There are 319 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1764: The site of present-day St. Louis is established by Pierre Laclede and Auguste Chouteau.

1898: The U.S. battleship Maine mysteriously blows up in Havana Harbor, killing more than 260 crew members and bringing the United States closer to war with Spain.

1933: President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt escapes an assassination attempt in Miami that fatally wounds Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak; gunman Giuseppe Zangara is executed more than four weeks later.

1965: Singer Nat King Cole, 45, dies in Santa Monica, Calif.

1989: The Soviet Union announces that the last of its troops have left Afghanistan, after more than nine years of military intervention.

1995: The FBI arrests Kevin Mitnick, its “most wanted hacker,” and charges him with cracking security for some of the nation’s most protected computers.

2002: A private funeral is held at Windsor Castle for Britain’s Princess Margaret, who died six days earlier at age 71.

2005: Defrocked priest Paul Shanley is sentenced in Boston to 12 to 15 years in prison on child rape charges.

2010: Eighteen people are killed when two trains collide near Brussels, Belgium.

2014: President Barack Obama signs measures lifting the federal debt limit and restoring benefits that had been cut for younger military retirees.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: Boardman Township trustees name K. Anthony Hayek & Associates as the architect of a new $2.25 million township police and administration building.

A Summit County Common Pleas jury finds Edward Swiger Jr. guilty of aggravated murder and kidnapping in the June 17, 1988, beating death of his former college roommate, Roger Pratt.

Republican Robert Taft II announces he will drop out of the race for the GOP nomination for Ohio governor and will run for secretary of state.

1975: The Rev. Richard Burns, senior minister at First United Methodist Church in Niles, is named Canton District superintendent of the United Methodist Church.

Mahoning County Common Pleas Judge Forest J. Cavalier enjoins the city of Youngstown from levying a dock fee on the owners of 14 properties at Lake Milton whose deeds contain riparian rights.

Boardman High defeats Hubbard, 69-54, to snare the Steel Valley Conference basketball title for the fifth time in the 10 years that Al Burns has been coach.

1965: North, East and Rayen are tied for second place in City Series.

The Four Square Wives hold a luncheon and card party at the H.K. Rayen Lodge. Presiding hostesses were Mrs. Paul Beede, Mrs. James Chessrown, Mrs. William Fender and Mrs. John McCarthy.

Jackson-Milton area residents vote in a special election for an $840,000 bond issue to construct a new high school.

1940: Dr. Walter H. Judd, American medical missionary to China, speaking at Youngstown First Presbyterian Church, says war-wary Americans are refusing to see the truth about Japanese “attacks on women in China, of refusal of the Japanese to give aid to the wounded and of bombing civilian areas.”

Some 125 Youngstown street workers attack the season’s heaviest snow fall of 8 inches with four plows and 20 ash-spreading trucks.

After being grilled for 10 hours, two Youngstown patrolmen are charged with grand larceny for the alleged theft of tires and antifreeze valued at $106 from the Lichty Service Station at 2200 Oak Hill Ave. Two girls, who were hiding behind the station because they thought the police had been called on them for throwing snowballs, watched as the patrolmen loaded the loot into their cruiser.