YEARS AGO

Today is Wednesday, Jan. 7, the seventh day of 2015. There are 358 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1610: Astronomer Galileo Galilei begins observing three of Jupiter’s moons (he spotted a fourth moon almost a week later).

1789: America has its first presidential election as voters choose electors who, a month later, selected George Washington to be the nation’s first chief executive.

1800: The 13th president of the United States, Millard Fillmore, is born in Summerhill, N.Y.

1894: One of the earliest motion picture experiments takes place at the Thomas Edison studio in West Orange, N.J., as Fred Ott is filmed taking a pinch of snuff and sneezing.

1904: The Marconi International Marine Communication Company of London announces that the telegraphed letters “CQD” would serve as a maritime distress call (it was later replaced with “SOS”).

1942: The Japanese siege of Bataan begins during World War II. (The fall of Bataan three months later was followed by the notorious Death March.)

1949: George C. Marshall resigns as U.S. secretary of state; President Harry S. Truman chooses Dean Acheson to succeed him.

1955: Singer Marian Anderson makes her debut with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, in Verdi’s “Un Ballo in Maschera.”

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. says he would support a peaceful strike by independent truck drivers to protest the rising cost of diesel fuel.

Mahoning County was shortchanged $76,113 when it failed to assess interest against LTV Steel Co. in the settlement that resulted in the company paying delinquent taxes.

Bernie Kosar and the Cleveland Browns give first-year head coach Bud Carson a trip to the AFC championship game with a 34-30 victory over the Buffalo Bills.

1975: Foul play is suspected in the Dec. 27 disappearance of Joanne Coughlin, 21, a former Youngstown State University student who was active in the Youngstown Playhouse. She was last seen at the European Health Spa on Boardman-Canfield Road.

House burglaries in Boardman Township in 1974 jumped an alarming 92 percent over 1973, and the general crime rate increased 24 present, Chief Grant Hess says in his annual report.

Nancy E. Terry is appointed a vice president of Robert Sherman & Associates in Warren. She serves as an account executive to Copperweld Steel, Amweld Building Products and L.W Nash of East Palestine.

1965: Claude Johnson, one of Youngstown’s all-time great athletes, dies. He excelled at football, basketball and baseball.

East Ohio Gas Co. plans to spend $1.6 million in the area to install new equipment, modernize, extend service lines and open new territory to customers.

Robert Hartranft of Southern Boulevard is hurt while standing in a telephone booth when one of four cars involved in a collision at Hillman Street and Ravenwood hurtles into the phone booth.

1940: Dr. Paul Henry Fall, professor of chemistry at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., is elected president of Hiram College, succeeding Dr. Kenneth I. Brown, who will be the next president of Denison University.

Mahoning County Common Pleas Court cases will be tried by eight-man juries for a five-week period in an economy move expected to save the county $8,000.

A new geology course at Youngstown College taught by Professor Ralph A. Waldron will tell the story of how nature gave the Mahoning Valley a waterway that stretched from Lake Erie to where Pittsburgh now stands, then played a prank and took it away.