Years Ago

Today is Thursday, Jan. 22, the 22nd day of 2015. There are 343 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1498: During his third voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus arrives at the present-day Caribbean island of St. Vincent.

1901: Britain’s Queen Victoria dies at age 81 after a reign of 63 years; she is succeeded by her eldest son, Edward VII.

1908: Katie Mulcahey becomes the first — and only — woman to run afoul of New York City’s just-passed ban on women smoking in public establishments. (Declaring, “No man shall dictate to me,” Mulcahey served a night in jail after refusing to pay a $5 fine; the law, which did not specify any fines, ended up being vetoed by Mayor George B. McClellan Jr.)

1917: President Woodrow Wilson pleads for an end to war in Europe, calling for “peace without victory.” (By April, however, America also was at war.)

1922: Pope Benedict XV dies; he is succeeded by Pius XI.

1938: Thornton Wilder’s play “Our Town” is performed publicly for the first time in Princeton,

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: Fire guts a wing of the Ramada Inn on Belmont Avenue in Liberty Township, sending guests, some of them in night clothes, fleeing into the cold morning air.

Despite parents’ concerns, high school students and the faculty in the Mathews School District appear to be coping with the lack of bus transportation, says Principal Paul Yocum.

Bob LaRicca, head basketball coach at Warren Western Reserve High School and one of the area’s most successful basketball coaches, says it was difficult breaking into the business because he was a “short white guy who didn’t look like a basketball coach.”

1975: Arthur Richards, president of the McKinley Club, announces that Richard D. Obenshain of Virginia, national co-chairman of the Republican Party, will be the featured speaker at the annual McKinley Club banquet in Niles.

Helen Struthers Thomas, 105, a member of a pioneer Youngstown area family associated with the Mahoning Valley’s steel development, dies of infirmities at her home at 2402 Tibbetts-Wick Road.

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources will add $500,000 to the $350,000 that Youngs-town City Council has appropriated for the repair of the Lake Milton Dam.

1965: The Youngstown Hospital Association has a major reorganization and will install separate administrators for each unit under executive director R.W. Bachmeyer.

The Youngstown Bridge Club’s annual tournament begins under the chairmanship of Mrs. Clifford Cassidy.

Bishop Emmet M. Walsh assigns priests to three Youngstown pastorates made vacant by recent deaths. The Rev. Arthur B. DeCrane is assigned to St. Patrick Church; the Rev. John C. Rath to St Nicholas, Struthers, and the Rev. Francis J. Haidet to St. Paul the Apostle, New Middletown.

1940: Youngstown Mayor William Spagnola says the city will move to eradicate junkyards that have sprouted in neighborhoods in which they are violating zoning codes.

East Ohio Gas Co., which shut off gas to industrial customers during severely cold weather, says it will wait one more day to turn the spigot back on, getting past “wash day” in most households.

Operators of the “numbers” lottery in Youngstown were estimated to have lost between $30,000 and $35,000 when the payoff number was the popular “711.”