YEARS AGO

Today is Thursday, Feb. 19, the 50th day of 2015. There are 315 days left in the year. This is the Lunar New Year of the Goat.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1473: Astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus is born in Torun, Poland.

1881: Kansas prohibits the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages.

1915: During World War I, British and French warships launch their initial attack on Ottoman forces in the Dardanelles, a strait in northwestern Turkey. (The Gallipoli Campaign that followed proved disastrous for the Allies.)

1934: A blizzard begins inundating the northeastern United States, with the heaviest snowfall occurring in Connecticut and Massachusetts.

1942: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, clearing the way for the U.S. military to relocate and intern Japanese-Americans during World War II.

1945: Operation Detachment begins during World War II as some 30,000 U.S. Marines begin landing on Iwo Jima, where they commence a successful month-long battle to seize control of the island from Japanese forces.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: Mahoning County commissioners have banned smoking in the hallways of the courthouse, but ashtrays remain on every floor while visitors to the building get used to the ban.

Australian Jane Rafter wins the Phar-Mor LPGA Inverrary Classic in Lauderhill, Fla. Phar-Mor President Mickey Monus and members of the Squaw Creek Country Club are at the tournament, learning what they’ll need to know when Youngstown hosts an LPGA tournament.

1975: The body of Patrick M. DeMar, 21, of 837 E. Florida Ave., Youngstown, is found in a burned-out pick -up truck on a deserted railroad access road in Weathersfield Township. He was the son of Samuel DeMar, owner of La Gourmet restaurant in Warren.

Some 150 strikers at the blooming mill of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. defy an order by Common Pleas Judge Charles Bannon that they return to work. The judge found their walkout over the elimination of jobs at the mill violates the USW contract, which contains an arbitration procedure.

Youngstown Mayor Jack C. Hunter asks City Council to pass a resolution urging the General Assembly to restore the death penalty in Ohio, saying there has been an “alarming increase” in homicides during robberies since capital punishment was abolished.

1965: The Rt. Rev. Msgr. John Hamrak, pastor of St. Matthias Church, dies after a long illness. Msgr. Hamrak served the Lansingville parish during its greatest growth years and left it debt-free.

Simco Enterprises Inc. announces construction of a 117-unit $1.5 million luxury apartment complex in Forest Glen on Glenwood Avenue will begin in April. New units will have built-in major appliances and carpeting , and the complex will feature a swimming pool and patio.

1940: Phi Gamma Fraternity, which has 40 members, becomes the second fraternity at Youngstown College to open a fraternity house. The fraternity leased a 12-room house at 42 E. Spring St.

The first 25 families move into their apartments in the Westlake housing project. A typical tenant who made $910 in 1939 and paid $15 for a four- room apartment with no hot water and no bathroom, will pay $20.75 a month to live in one of Westlake’s modern fully equipped apartments.

Edward H. Turner, 60, deputy city engineer in charge of construction at the new municipal airport nearing completion in Vienna, dies at his home at 236 Grenada Ave. of a lung condition