YEARS AGO

Today is Sunday, Jan. 18, the 18th day of 2015. There are 347 days left in the year.

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On this date in:

1778: English navigator Capt. James Cook reaches the present-day Hawaiian Islands, which he names the “Sandwich Islands.”

1862: The tenth president of the United States, John Tyler, dies in Richmond, Va., at age 71.

1911: The first landing of an aircraft on a ship takes place as pilot Eugene B. Ely brought his Curtiss biplane in for a safe landing on the deck of the armored cruiser USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco Harbor.

1936: Nobel Prize- winning author Rudyard Kipling, 70, dies in London.

A U.S. ban on the sale of pre-sliced bread — aimed at reducing bakeries’ demand for metal replacement parts — takes effect.

1949: Charles Ponzi, engineer of one of the most spectacular mass swindles in history, dies destitute at a hospital in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, at age 66.

1967: Albert DeSalvo, who claims to be the “Boston Strangler,” is convicted of armed robbery, assault and sex offenses. (Sentenced to life, DeSalvo was killed in prison in 1973.)

1975: The situation comedy “The Jeffersons,” a spin-off from “All in the Family,” premieres on CBS-TV.

1990: A jury in Los Angeles acquits former preschool operators Raymond Buckey and his mother, Peggy McMartin Buckey, of 52 child molestation charges.

Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry is arrested in an FBI sting on drug-possession charges (he was later convicted of a misdemeanor).

1993: The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is observed in all 50 states for the first time.

2005: Secretary of State nominee Condoleezza Rice, at her Senate confirmation hearing, insists the United States is fully prepared for the Iraq war and its aftermath and refuses to give a timetable for U.S. troops to come home.

2010: Taliban militants wearing explosive vests launch a brazen daylight assault on the center of Kabul with suicide bombings and gunbattles that paralyze the Afghan capital for hours.

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1990: A meeting between officials of the Edward J. DeBartolo Corp. and Youngstown State will be held to explore the possibility of DeBartolo’s donating the Higbee building downtown to YSU. DeBartolo and Dillard Department Stores Inc. of Little Rock jointly own Higbee Co.

Steelastic Co., an Akron manufacturer of tire, rubber and plastics equipment, purchases NRM Co., which has plants in Columbiana and Leetonia to employ 500 people.

Capt. Fred Moosally, a Youngstown native who was at the helm of the USS Iowa when a turret explosion killed 47 sailors, tells the Virginia- Pilot newspaper that he will retire from the Navy and hints that he may write a book.

1975: An areawide search is underway for David Evans, 13, of Ridgewood Drive, Boardman, a student at Boardman Center Middle School, who was last seen near the family home at Stillson Place and Withers Drive.

Two members of the United Auto Workers at Lordstown are charged in the alleged intimidation with pistols of two Youngstown Labor Party candidates who were distributing campaign literature at the GM plant in Lordstown. The local UAW and the Labor Party have filed multimillion- dollar lawsuits against each other in recent years.

Two men, one armed with a small revolver, rob John Adams, a clerk at the Kilcawley Student Center on the Youngstown State campus, of an undetermined amount of cash.

1965: Charles M. Beeghly, chairman of the board of Jones & Laughlin, receives the distinguished merit award, Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity’s highest award, at a ceremony and luncheon at the Carlton House in Pitts-burgh.

Griff Allen is the Chesterton Club’s new president after an election at Raver’s restaurant. Other officers are Stephen Sedlacko, Edward Miller, and Michael Lyden Jr.

After three days of debate, the NCAA adopts the return of the two- platoon system in football. Also under new rules, two substitute players may enter the game at the same time.

1940: Two Baltimore & Ohio freight trains collide near New Castle, Pa., killing three crewmen and injuring a fourth. Dead are H.H. Bowser, C.S. Kunkle and F.D. Welty.

Sam Stites, general manager of the Ohio Edison Co., heads a committee of the Youngstown Chamber of Commerce that will study 11 important area airports in the region to formulate policies for operation of the Youngstown Municipal Airport under construction in Vienna.

Moriz Rosenthal, famed Polish pianist and a student of Franz Listz, appears as soloist with the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra. Before the concert, Hermann Gruss, a local pianist, showed Rosenthal a photograph of Liszt and some pupils that Gruss bought in Europe in 1904. Rosenthal, 76, pointed himself out in the picture, which he autographed for Gruss.