YEARS AGO

years ago

Today is Thursday, April 14, the 105th day of 2016. There are 261 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1775: The first American society for the abolition of slavery is formed in Philadelphia.

1828: The first edition of Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language is published.

1865: President Abraham Lincoln is shot and mortally wounded by John Wilkes Booth during a performance of “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theater in Washington.

1912: The British liner RMS Titanic collides with an iceberg in the North Atlantic at 11:40 p.m. ship’s time and begins sinking. (The ship went under two hours and 40 minutes later with the loss of 1,514 lives.)

1935: The “Black Sunday” dust storm descends upon the central Plains, turning a sunny afternoon into total darkness.

1939: The John Steinbeck novel “The Grapes of Wrath” is first published by Viking Press.

1956: Ampex Corp. demonstrates the first practical videotape recorder at the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters Convention in Chicago.

1981: The first test flight of America’s first operational space shuttle, the Columbia, ends successfully with a landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

1995: Oscar-winning actor-singer Burl Ives dies in Anacortes, Wash., at age 85.

2011: Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi rolls defiantly through the streets of Tripoli the same day NATO air strikes shake the city.

2015: The White House announces that President Barack Obama would remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, a key step in his bid to normalize relations between the two countries.

VINDICATOR FILES

1991: Ed Myers of Tod Woods Middle School, Girard, wins the 58th annual Vindicator Spelling Bee in a head-to-head spelldown with Vincent Guerrieri of Volney Rogers Junior High School that ended when Ed spelled “millennium” and “nonagenarian.”

During 1990, Mahoning County officials and employees had $52,985 in credit-card charges, most of it for travel. Some of the questionable charges included fees for hair styling, dry cleaning, movies and personal long- distance phone calls.

Mahoning County Board of Elections officials Don L. Hanni Jr. and his son, Mark A. Hanni, have racked up more than $1,000 in cellular phone calls since January, some of it for board business, but much for personal calls that will have to be reimbursed.

1976: A controversial bill that passed the Senate requiring full financial disclosures by lobbyists who wine and dine legislators is headed for the House with little chance of passage this year. House Speaker Vernal G. Riffe Jr., D-New Boston, says the Senate can hardly expect the House to pass in a week a bill that was tied up in the Senate for a year.

Pauline Thomas, a senior at Crestview High School, Columbiana, is awarded a full four-year scholarship to Youngstown State University by Local 1331, United Steelworkers of America, at Republic Steel Corp., Youngstown.

Charles W. Jewell of Princeton Junior High School is chosen president of the Youngstown Education Association for a fourth- consecutive term.

1966: Boardman trustees table for further study a zone-change request by developer William Cafaro & Associates for a $16 million enclosed shopping mall at Market Street and U.S. Route 224.

Mrs. Benjamin Ruth of Youngstown is elected president of the Ohio Federation of Women’s Clubs, succeeding Mrs. William Murry of Wellington.

Lloyd Fitzpatrick, a science teacher at Salem Junior High School, is awarded a three-year, $20,000 grant from NASA to conduct research in ecology at Kent State University.

Youngstown City Council approves the installation of “white way” vapor street lights in the Youngstown University area.

1941: The War Department announces that the Ravenna ordnance plant will be expanded by construction of a new building and facilities costing from $5 million to $10 million.

An intricate system of traffic lights goes into operation at the north end of the South Avenue Bridge at the same time as Traffic Commissioner Sam Coppersmith recommends that the system be abandoned and the street system revamped.

Ohio’s Blue Laws are not as stringent or numerous as in some states, but they provide fines and jail sentences for some activities that people consider innocent. Fishing, for example, is prohibited and punishable by fines of $20 or 20 days in jail.

A coal shortage caused by a bituminous-coal strike causes Republic Steel Corp. to close down one blast furnace and plan a slowdown of coke production.