YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

Today is Friday, April 8, the 99th day of 2016. There are 267 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1820: The Venus de Milo statue is discovered by a farmer on the Greek island of Milos.

1864: The United States Senate passes, 38-6, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery. (The House of Representatives passed it in January 1865; the amendment was ratified and adopted in December 1865.)

1904: Longacre Square in Manhattan is renamed Times Square after The New York Times.

1913: The 17th Amendment to the Constitution, providing for popular election of United States senators (as opposed to appointment by state legislatures), is ratified.

1935:President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Emergency Relief Appropriations Act, which provides money for programs such as the Works Progress Administration.

1946: The League of Nations assembles in Geneva for its final session.

1952: President Harry S. Truman seizes the American steel industry to avert a nationwide strike. (The Supreme Court later ruled that Truman had overstepped his authority, opening the way for a seven-week strike by steelworkers.)

1961: A suspected bomb explodes aboard the passenger liner MV Dara in the Persian Gulf, causing it to sink; 238 of the 819 people aboard are killed.

1973: Artist Pablo Picasso dies in Mougins, France, at age 91.

1974: Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hits his 715th career home run in a game against the Los Angeles Dodgers, breaking Babe Ruth’s record.

1990: Ryan White, the teenage AIDS patient whose battle for acceptance had gained national attention, dies in Indianapolis at age 18.

1994: Kurt Cobain, singer and guitarist for the grunge band Nirvana, is found dead in Seattle from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound; he was 27.

2015: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is convicted by a federal jury on all 30 charges against him in the Boston Marathon bombing. He is found responsible for the deaths of the three people killed in the 2013 attack and the killing of an MIT police officer three days later. (He was sentenced to death the following month.)

VINDICATOR FILES

1991: Efforts to build a $1.9 million magnetic resonance imaging center in Boardman is facing opposition from the Packard Electric Division of General Motors, which faces a December deadline for cutting its health care costs.

Reader’s Digest magazine, with a circulation of 16.4 million, is working on a story about the brutal murder of 12-year-old Raymond Fife in Warren.

The Youngstown Metropolitan Housing Authority is forwarding to the city of Youngstown a $180,000 federal grant so that six police officers can be assigned to patrol Westlake Terrace Apartments and Kimmel Brook Homes.

1976: A 16-year-old Niles youth faces charges in Trumbull County Juvenile Court in the shotgun slaying of Steve Schrader, 20, of Warren in a Chestnut Street home. The youth told police he pulled the trigger but didn’t know the gun was loaded.

As a service to stamp and currency collectors, the Youngstown post office will hand-cancel 13-cent stamps on the new $2 bill on the date of issuance, April 13. That date is the birthday of Thomas Jefferson, who appears on the bill.

Robert Charles, 30, of Struthers is found slain on the porch at 1050 Wilson Ave. after he became angry with a female friend who was moving her possessions from the house.

1966: The Division of Aviation of the Ohio Department of Commerce approves Swaney Airport, 4 miles north of East Liverpool in Madison Township, as the site of the Columbiana County Airport.

Trumbull County Commissioner Robert Hagan is asked to outline his proposal for construction of a super-jet airport at the Ravenna Arsenal to the secretary of the Army in Washington, D.C.

1941:In a speech at the Army Day banquet at the Isaly Auditorium, U.S. Rep. Michael J. Kirwan says the nation is facing the prospect of war now because it scorned Woodrow Wilson’s attempts to build a more-peaceful world after the last war.

The Seven-Up team has a five-game lead as the Mahoning Bowling League goes into its final season.

Thousands from the Mahoning Valley will be attending the Metropolitan Opera Co.’s annual spring festival in Cleveland.