YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

Today is Friday, June 12, the 163rd day of 2015. There are 202 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1776: Virginia’s colonial Legislature becomes the first to adopt a Bill of Rights.

1898: Philippine nationalists declare independence from Spain.

1920: The Republican National Convention, meeting in Chicago, nominates Warren G. Harding for presiden; Calvin Coolidge is nominated for vice president.

1924: President Calvin Coolidge is nominated for a term of office in his own right at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. (Coolidge had become president in 1923 upon the sudden death of Warren G. Harding.)

1942: Anne Frank, a German-born Jewish girl living in Amsterdam, receives a diary for her 13th birthday, less than a month before she and her family go into hiding from the Nazis.

1987: President Ronald Reagan challenges Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down” the Berlin wall.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: The Youngstown Developmental Center, a Mineral Ridge facility that serves as home for about 120 mentally retarded children and adults, is being targeted for conversion to a state prison, says Dr. Douglas Burkhardt, superintendent of the Mahoning County Board of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities.

The city of Niles begins billing nonresident electricity customers 17 percent more in a move that will raise about $200,000 a year for improvements.

Austintown Assistant Superintendent James L. D’Eramo is named superintendent, succeeding Bernard Dunnan. Richard Denamen is named assistant superintendent, and Stanley R. Watson is named principal of Austintown Fitch High School.

1975: Work completed on the $3.5 million rehabilitation of runways and taxiways at the Youngstown Municipal Airport is being re-examined because of ripples in the paving surface.

Burglars steal a collection of 50 handguns, some of them rare, from the Mineral Ridge home of Ralph Goodge.

Republic Steel Corp. will spend $20 million to increase production at its Mahoning Valley District plant in Warren.

1965: The National Rivers and Harbors Congress awards a bronze plaque, the George Washington Medal, to U.S. Rep. Michael J. Kirwan for his “clear vision of the future of America” and his service to the nation’s water resources.

Lynn Thorp of Niles is the new Bethel Queen of Bethel 35,International Order of Job’s Daughters, at the Niles Masonic Temple.

William Robinette is installed as excellent high priest of Ashlar Chapter 213, Royal Arch Masons, at ceremonies the Masonic Temple, Wick Avenue.

Columbiana County Juvenile Court Judge Louis Tobin orders the Dukes of Salem, a boys club, disbanded after an initiation ritual that involved paddling with sticks and bats injured five boys, one of whom was hospitalized. Sixteen boys were ordered to pay $5 each to the parents of the hospitalized boy.

1940: A special guard is being placed at Lake Milton at the request and expense of Valley industrial plants to prevent the possibility of sabotage at the dam.

Seeking to prevent natural-gas shortages that slowed Youngstown district industrial operations last winter, East Ohio Gas Co. will build a $1 million plant to store gas in liquid form in Cleveland.

Youngstown city councilmen, who are paid $600 a year, are paid four times as much as typical councilmen in the nation’s 1,807 cities of more than 5,000 people. However, in 20 of the largest cities, councilmen are paid as much as $5,000.