YEARS AGO

Today is Monday, Feb. 23, the 54th day of 2015. There are 311 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1836: The siege of the Alamo begins in San Antonio, Texas.

1848: The sixth president of the United States, John Quincy Adams, dies in Washington, D.C., at age 80.

1863: British explorers John H. Speke and James A. Grant announce they have found the source of the Nile River to be Lake Victoria.

1870: Mississippi is readmitted to the Union.

1903: President Theodore Roosevelt signs an agreement with Cuba to lease the area around Guantanamo Bay to the United States.

1927: President Calvin Coolidge signs a bill creating the Federal Radio Commission, forerunner of the Federal Communications Commission.

1934: Leopold III succeeds his late father, Albert I, as King of the Belgians.

1945: During World War II, U.S. Marines on Iwo Jima capture Mount Suribachi, where they raise the American flag. (There were actually two flag-raisings, the second of which was captured in the iconic photograph taken by Joe Rosenthal of The Associated Press.)

1954: The first mass inoculation of schoolchildren against polio using the Salk vaccine begins in Pittsburgh as some 5,000 students are vaccinated.

1965: Film comedian Stan Laurel, 74, dies in Santa Monica, Calif.

1970: Guyana becomes a republic within the Commonwealth of Nations.

1995: The Dow Jones industrial average closes above the 4,000 mark for the first time, ending the day at 4,003.33.

2005: A jury is selected in Santa Maria, Calif., to decide Michael Jackson’s fate on charges that he’d molested a teenage boy at his Neverland Ranch. (Jackson was later acquitted.)

President George W. Bush and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder agree to turn down the volume on their disagreements about Iraq and Iran.

French film star Simone Simon, 94, dies in Paris.

2010: The House Energy and Commerce Committee, looking into cases of sudden, unintended acceleration of Toyota automobiles, hears tearful testimony from Rhonda Smith of Sevierville, Tenn., who said her Lexus had raced out of control to speeds up to 100 miles an hour.

Dutch skater Sven Kramer loses the Olympic gold medal to Lee Seung-hoon of South Korea when coach Gerard Kemkers sends him the wrong way on a changeover during the 10,000-meter speedskating race at Vancouver, causing Kramer to be disqualified.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: Trumbull County commissioners receive a proposal for a $100 million development of 450 houses and condominiums and a golf course at Ohio Water Service’s Girard Lakes.

Former U.S. Rep. Lyle Williams waits until the eve of the filing deadline to announce that he will not run in the Republican primary, which would allow him to challenge U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr., a Democrat.

John D. Fry, president of the Sharon Steel Division, says the company will need the combined efforts of labor, management, customers and other involved parties to operate under its own bankruptcy reorganization plan or be sold to a responsible buyer.

1975: In a period of four months, unemployment claims in Trumbull County have increased by more than 700 percent, from 1,575 in mid-September to 13,817 in January, primarily due to layoffs in the auto industry and its satellites, including steel.

John E. Holzbach, coordinator of outdoor education for the Howland Local School District, will become superintendent of Boardman Township parks, succeeding Ivor Jenkins, who is retiring.

Nebraska-Omaha turns back Youngstown State, 80-76, before 3,223 fans at Beeghly Center, dampening hopes for a post-season playoff bid for the Penguins, which have a record of 17-7, with two games remaining.

1965: Damage is estimated at $100,000 at East Junior High School, Warren, after a weekend of vandalism. All water faucets were turned on and the drains plugged up, which caused flooding of 3 inches in every room.

Sharon Steel Corp.’s president and chairman, Donald W. Frease, announces the company has begun a $50 million expansion program, which includes two 60-inch strip mills.

Al Wagner sells assets of his Lincoln-Mercury dealership on Wick Avenue to Hugh G. Kroehle of Warren.

1940: Frank Makar, 26, of 344 Randolph St., is back in Youngstown after being trapped for three days during the German blitzkrieg of Poland. Makar says Polish and Ukrainian peasants at Stary Somber, a town of 3,000 where he was staying, welcomed the Germans because of the oppressive conditions they endured under the Polish government.

Mahoning County Common Pleas Judge Erskine Maiden Jr. orders Western Union in Youngstown to continue service to a horse race news service until 48 hours after a federal district court takes control of the case.

The inquiry into insurance company operations from the Temporary National Economic Committee is a step toward the government’s takeover of the life insurance business, Ralph W. Hoyer of Columbus, president of the Ohio Association of Life Underwriters, tells Youngstown area underwriters.