YEARS AGO

Today is Friday, Feb. 20, the 51st day of 2015. There are 314 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1792: President George Washington signs an act creating the U.S. Post Office.

1862: William Wallace Lincoln, the 11-year-old son of President Abraham Lincoln and first lady Mary Todd Lincoln, dies at the White House, apparently of typhoid fever.

1905: The U.S. Supreme Court, in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, upholds, 7-2, compulsory vaccination laws intended to protect the public’s health. (The case involved a Swedish immigrant, Henning Jacobson, who refused to pay a $5 fine for refusing to be vaccinated against smallpox; the Court upheld the right of states to penalize individuals who rejected vaccinations, but did not say they could be forcibly vaccinated.)

1915: The Panama Pacific International Exposition opens in San Francisco (the fair lasted until December).

1938: Anthony Eden resigns as British foreign secretary after Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s decision to negotiate with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

1944: During World War II, U.S. strategic bombers begin raiding German aircraft manufacturing centers in a series of attacks that became known as “Big Week.”

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: The Sharon City School District will spend $35,000 to create and equip its first central computer lab with between 20 and 25 computers. There are several smaller computer labs dedicated to specific areas of study.

Youngstown area Chevrolet dealers are hoping Derrick Cope’s win of the Daytona 500 race behind the wheel of a Lumina will spur sales of the new model. Greg Greenwood, general manager of Greenwood Chevrolet, says, “People feel comfortable doing business with a winner.”

Two Mahoning County offices of the American Automobile Association, one downtown at 116 Front St. and one at 7025 Market St., will consolidate into a new office in the SCS office building under construction at 1275 Boardman- Canfield Road.

1975: A strike by 150 workers at the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. blooming mill over the elimination of 18 jobs enters its fifth day and has virtually shut down operations in Campbell, idling about 5,800 employees.

A four-hour polygraph test apparently clears a 46-year-old Pennsylvania parolee who was a suspect in the murders of Benjamin Marsh, his wife and daughter at their Canfield home.

Three armed men enter a second floor apartment at 90 E. Evergreen Ave., rob one tenant and wound another, Pat Costello, 22. A visitor, Donald Mortimer, 25, jumped out a window when he heard the shots, suffering hand and ankle injuries.

1965: Boardman High’s cagers end the season with 18 victories and no defeats after beating Brookfield, 39-25. Jim Geller led Coach Selby’s Spartans with 19 points.

1940: Four downtown poolrooms, reputedly branch headquarters of the “Big House” lottery operation, are put on the “banned list” for 1940 licenses pending an investigation by the police department.

Mrs. Fred M. Orr is re-elected for the 25th year as chairman of the Mahoning Red Cross and Mrs. Ernest W. Travis is elected a new director.

Archbishop Joseph Schrembs of the Cleveland Catholic Diocese orders that Holy Redeemer Church in Cleveland be closed after 1,500 people blocked ceremonies to install a new pastor, the Rev. Vincent Caruso. The parishioners wanted a former assistant, the Rev. Louis Zedda, to be named.