YEARS AGO
Today is Ash Wednesday, Feb. 18, the 49th day of 2015. There are 316 days left in the year.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
On this date in:
1546: Martin Luther, leader of the Protestant Reformation in Germany, dies in Eisleben.
1564: Artist Michelangelo Buonarroti dies in Rome, just weeks before his 89th birthday.
1861: Jefferson Davis is sworn in as provisional president of the Confederate States of America in Montgomery, Ala.
1885: Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is published in the U.S. for the first time (after already being published in Britain and Canada).
1913: Mexican President Francisco I. Madero and Vice President Jose Maria Pino Suarez are arrested during a military coup (both were shot to death on Feb. 22).
1930: Photographic evidence of Pluto (now designated a “dwarf planet”) is discovered by Clyde W. Tombaugh at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz.
1943: Madame Chiang Kai-shek, the wife of the Chinese leader, addresses members of the Senate and then the House, becoming the first Chinese national to address both houses of the U.S. Congress.
1953: “Bwana Devil,” the movie that heralded the 3D fad of the 1950s, has its New York opening.
1960: The 8th Winter Olympic Games are formally opened in Squaw Valley, California, by Vice President Richard M. Nixon.
1970: The “Chicago Seven” defendants are found not guilty of conspiring to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention; five are convicted of violating the Anti-Riot Act of 1968 (those convictions were later reversed).
1984: Italy and the Vatican sign an accord under which Roman Catholicism ceases to be the state religion of Italy.
1995: The NAACP replaces veteran Chairman William Gibson with Myrlie Evers-Williams, the widow of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers.
2001: Auto racing star Dale Earnhardt Sr. dies in a crash at the Daytona 500; he was 49.
2005: Explosions tear through Baghdad and a nearby city on the eve of Shiite Muslims’ holiest day, killing three dozen people.
Uli Derickson, the flight attendant who’d helped save passengers during the 1985 TWA hijacking, dies in Tucson, Ariz., at age 60.
2010: In Austin, Texas, software engineer A. Joseph Stack III crashes his single-engine plane into a building containing IRS offices, killing one person besides himself.
President Barack Obama personally welcomes the Dalai Lama to the White House, but keeps the get-together off camera and low key in an attempt to avoid inflaming tensions with China.
In Vancouver, Evan Lysacek becomes the first U.S. man to win the Olympic gold medal since Brian Boitano in 1988, shocking everyone by upsetting defending champion Evgeni Plushenko.
2014: Defiant protesters shout “Glory to Ukraine!” as burning tents light up the night sky after thousands of riot police moved against the sprawling protest camp in the center of Kiev.
Megan Rice, an 84-year-old nun, is sentenced in Knoxville, Tennessee, to nearly three years in prison for breaking into a nuclear weapons complex and defacing a bunker holding bomb-grade uranium, a demonstration that exposes serious security flaws at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge. (Two other activists received sentences of just over five years.)
Jorrit Bergsma sets an Olympic record and leads another Dutch speedskating sweep, winning the 10,000 meters at Sochi with an upset of countryman Sven Kramer in 12:44.45, eclipsing the Olympic record of 12:58.55.
Maria Franziska von Trapp, 99, the last surviving member of the seven original Trapp Family Singers of “Sound of Music” fame (and stepdaughter of “the” Maria von Trapp), dies in Stowe, Vt.
VINDICATOR FILES
1990: The owner of a convenience store at 1412 McGuffey Road is arrested after he purportedly fired into a crowd of people in his parking lot, wounding Antwain Howell, 16, who is in serious condition in St. Elizabeth Hospital Medical Center.
About 35 youngsters take part in the fifth annual Baby Race at the J.C. Penney Co. store at Southern Park Mall.
Dr. Thomas W. Cole Jr., president of Clark Atlanta University in Georgia, tells 1,000 people at the United Negro College Fund in Youngstown that fewer black students are enrolling in colleges in 1990 than in 1980 because of difficulties in funding higher education.
1975: A 15-year-old North Side youth who told police he did not want to stay in the Juvenile Research Center sets fire to his clothes. He is in fair condition at South Side Hospital with burns.
Salim Awadalla, owner of the Berih Food Market at 1618 Highland Ave., shoots and captures one of three men who robbed him of $280. The man is in satisfactory condition with a leg wound in St. Elizabeth Hospital; the other two fled in a late model car.
Chuck Tanner, the Chicago White Sox manager who hails from New Castle, Pa., regales the Curbstone Coaches Old Timers with tales of life in the big leagues and predicts his team will be in contention for the American League pennant.
1965: Sister Mary Richard, principal of Immaculate Conception School, is one of 1,000 statesmen and scholars invited to an international convocation on peace at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in New York City.
State Highway Director P.E. Masheter addresses a meeting of the Lake Erie to Ohio River Association at the Mural Room. Masheter discusses the recent developments in state plans to build a lake-to-river highway.
1940: Dr. George J. Edam, Middle Bass Island physician, his wife and two children drown when their car plunges through the ice on an “ice bridge” that motorists had been using regularly to cross between Put-In-Bay and Middle Bass Island in Lake Erie.
Paul Wick, president of the Mahoning Valley Council of the Boy Scouts of America, is awarded the Silver Beaver medal for outstanding service to Scouting during the annual dinner at the Hotel Ohio.
A special board of naval experts recommends to Congress that the United States adopt a program that would make it a world leader in dirigible travel by the end of the European war.
Corrected version
Feb. 13, 1965: At the Lake Erie AAU Golden Gloves boxing tournament in Cleveland, four local boxers win crowns: Mark Estes, 118 pounds; Dom Leone, 135; Zack Page, 160; Joe McKinney, 118.