YEARS AGO

Today is Thursday, Feb. 26, the 57th day of 2015. There are 308 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1815: Napoleon Bona-parte escapes from exile on the Island of Elba and heads back to France in a bid to regain power.

1904: The United States and Panama proclaim a treaty under which the U.S. agrees to undertake efforts to build a ship canal across the Panama isthmus.

1919: President Woodrow Wilson signs a congressional act establishing Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona.

1929: President Calvin Coolidge signs a measure establishing Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.

VINDICATOR Files

1990: Louis Zona, executive director of the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, is one of seven recipients of the Ohio Arts Council’s 1990 Governor’s Award.

Richard J. Billak, executive director of Community Corrections Association Inc. in Youngstown, says CCA provides the courts with a range of sanctions in dealing with offenders, all of whom are not alike.

Fire destroys the vacant Kirby Sweeper Co. building at 1231 S. Mill St. and a vacant tailor shop at 1129 S. Mill St. in New Castle, Pa.

1975: General Motors Corp. will soon begin equipping some Lords- town-built subcompact Vegas with aluminum deck lids, replacing steel.

James A. Marshall, 71, a toll collector on the privately owned East Liverpool-Newell bridge is killed by a shotgun blast fired by a motorist driving from Ohio to West Virginia. Police have no motive for the shooting.

Elizabeth Garver, 75, is killed by a hit-skip motorist while crossing the street in front of her home at Powers Way and Windsor Avenue.

1965: Robert J. Fithian, president of Fithian-Wilbert Burial Vault Co., is named “Boss of the Year” by the Yo-Mah-O Chapter, National Secretaries Association at their 19th annual “Bosses’ Night” dinner at the Hotel Pick-Ohio.

Violent winter storms sweep over the eastern third of the nation bringing the worst winter weather recorded in years.

Jeannie Maguire, 83, long a leader in the temperance movement in Mahoning County and widow of auto dealer Andrew G. Maguire, dies at the home of a daughter in Brooklyn, N.Y.

1940: George Harris, 94, a pioneer resident of Niles whose father, James, an early iron man, built the Brown-Bonnell mill in Youngstown and the Harris-Blackford mill in Niles, dies at his home at 522 Robbins Ave.

Two Youngstown firemen are injured fighting a three-alarm fire that destroyed the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. supermarket at 15 Walnut St. Damage is estimated at $44,000 to $62,000. The nearby Moyer Manufacturing Co. and Buddie Furniture Co. suffered smoke damage to pants material and to upholstery material.

Phillip Murray, vice president of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, tells an audience of 1,200 at Harding High School in Warren that a farm-labor coalition should develop a solution to the unemployment problem that would be submitted to the national conventions of both political parties.