YEARS AGO

Today is Thursday, Jan. 29, the 29th day of 2015. There are 336 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1820: Britain’s King George III dies at Windsor Castle.

1843: The 25th president of the United States, William McKinley, is born in Niles, Ohio.

1845: Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven” is first published in the New York Evening Mirror.

1861: Kansas becomes the 34th state of the Union.

1919: The ratification of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, which launches Prohibition, is certified by Acting Secretary of State Frank L. Polk.

1936: The first inductees of baseball’s Hall of Fame, including Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth, are named in Cooperstown, N.Y.

1956: Editor-essayist H.L. Mencken, the “Sage of Baltimore,” dies at age 75.

1958: Actors Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward are married in Las Vegas.

1964: Stanley Kubrick’s nuclear war satire “Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” premieres in New York, Toronto and London.

The Winter Olympic Games open in Innsbruck, Austria.

Actor Alan Ladd, 50, dies in Palm Springs.

1975: A bomb explodes inside the U.S. State Department in Washington, causing considerable damage, but injuring no one; the radical group Weather Underground claims responsibility.

1990: Former Exxon Valdez skipper Joseph Hazelwood goes on trial in Anchorage on charges stemming from the 1989 oil spill. (Hazelwood was acquitted of the major charges, and convicted of a misdemeanor.)

1995: The San Francisco 49ers become the first team in NFL history to win five Super Bowl titles, beating the San Diego Chargers, 49-26, in Super Bowl XXIX.

1998: A bomb rocks an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Ala., killing security guard Robert Sanderson and critically injuring nurse Emily Lyons. (The bomber, Eric Rudolph, was captured in May 2003 and is serving a life sentence.)

2005: Jetliners from China land in rival Taiwan for the first time in 56 years.

Serena Williams defeats Lindsay Davenport 2-6, 6-3, 6-0 in the Australian Open final.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: Edward J. DeBartolo’s San Francisco 49ers crush the Denver Broncos, 55-10, in Super Bowl XXIV.

Federal agents assisted by some local police execute 34 search warrants, including 14 in Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties, in a crackdown on illegal gambling.

Col. John F. Harvey, former commander of the 910th Tactical Airlift Group at Youngstown Municipal Airport, is selected for promotion to brigadier general.

1975: The Mahoning County Legal Assistance Association files a class action suit in U.S. District Court on behalf of Leonard Hodory, a millwright apprentice at U.S. Steel Corp.’s Ohio Works, against the Ohio Bureau of Employment Services to recover unemployment compensation benefits lost during a coal strike.

A Vindicator poll of congressmen from the Youngstown area show most are opposed to President Ford’s proposed $3 import tax on a barrel of oil and prefer some form of rationing over increased taxes.

Youngstown Prosecutor Edward Sowinski, 41, is in critical condition after being admitted to the coronary care unit of St. Elizabeth Hospital.

1965: Russell McKay, president of the Home Savings & Loan Co., reports increased assets for 1964 of $7 million, bringing total assets to $144.7 million.

Edward A. Flynn, West Martin Street, East Palestine, a potter and former Major League baseball scout, dies in North Side Hospital.

WFMJ-TV will carry the telecast of the funeral of Winston Churchill, which will be relayed over Telestar and on film and TV tape flown across the Atlantic.

1940: Three sons of Judge James E. Bennett of Poland give Cornell University a unique brother act on the basketball court. Jim Bennett, a varsity star last year, is joined by twin brothers Hugh and George, on this year’s freshman team.

The largest dinner crowd ever served in the Duco degli Abruzzi-Colombo Hall honors Youngstown’s new mayor, William Spagnola. The mayor tells the crowd, “I am still the same human being you have always known ... but you cannot expect me to do the impossible and give out jobs that are simply not there to give.”

Truck driver Ernaldo Ruggieri plunges into Crab Creek at the foot of East Scott Street and saves from drowning one of two boys who had broken through thin ice. Vincent Santangelo, 10, is saved, but his companion, Nick Broolis, 9, disappeared before Ruggieri could get to him.