YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

Today is Saturday, April 16, the 107th day of 2016. There are 259 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in::

1789: President-elect George Washington leaves Mount Vernon, Va., for his inauguration in New York.

1912: American aviator Harriet Quimby becomes the first woman to fly across the English Channel, leaving Dover, England, and arriving near Calais, France, in 59 minutes.

1940: Major League Baseball’s first (and, to date, only) opening day no-hitter takes place as Bob Feller of the Cleveland Indians pitches a no-no against the Chicago White Sox, 1-0, at Comiskey Park.

1945: During World War II, a Soviet submarine in the Baltic Sea torpedoes and sinks the MV Goya, which Germany was using to transport civilian refugees and wounded soldiers; it’s estimated that up to 7,000 people died.

1947: The French ship Grandcamp blows up at the harbor in Texas City, Texas; another ship, the High Flyer, explodes the following day (the blasts and fires killed nearly 600 people).

1963: Martin Luther King Jr. writes his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in which he says, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

1972: Apollo 16 blasts off on a voyage to the moon with astronauts John W. Young, Charles M. Duke Jr. and Ken Mattingly on board.

1986: Dispelling rumors he was dead, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi appears on television to condemn the U.S. raid on his country and to say that Libyans are “ready to die” defending their nation.

2007: College student Seung-Hui Cho shoots and kills 32 people on the campus of Virginia Tech before taking his own life.

2011: A Taliban sleeper agent walks into a meeting of NATO trainers and Afghan troops at Forward Operating Base Gamberi in the eastern Afghan province of Laghman and detonates a vest of explosives hidden underneath his uniform; six American troops, four Afghan soldiers and an interpreter are killed.

2015: U.N. Security Council members are moved to tears as a Syrian doctor, Mohamed Tennari, an eyewitness to suspected chlorine attacks on civilians in Syria, gives a graphic eyewitness account of dying children during a closed-door briefing.

VINDICATOR FILES

1991: Speaking in Warren, Dr. Edward G. Kilroy, recently appointed by Gov. George Voinovich as director of the Ohio Department of Health, says that the number of uninsured Ohioans is growing by “leaps and bounds,” and help should be provided to those people, as well as the elderly.

Production employees at Sharon Steel Corp. elect Gene Bianco as president of USW Local 1197. Bianco defeats long-time president Howard Clark, 1,019 to 369. The union represents about 2,000 workers.

Mahoning County commissioners will allow county Prosecutor James Philomena to take control of the Child Support Enforcement Agency despite complaints from agency director Robert Casey and some of the CSEA lawyers.

1976: Some 1,500 poor, elderly and handicapped people in Mahoning County face cutbacks in Medicaid services May 1 due to a state budget shortfall.

U.S. District Judge Leroy Contie makes a surprise visit to several Youngstown schools a month before he will begin hearing the NAACP’s lawsuit challenging segregation in Youngstown City Schools.

Mayor Arthur Richards says the city of Warren will place 60 employees on four-day workweeks as part of the continuing effort to balance the municipal budget.

1966: Mahoning County Community College, assured of a state charter by the Ohio Board of Regents, may merge with the proposed Columbiana County Community College.

Niles Police Sgt. John Scott pursued an apparently driverless car on Oliver Street in Niles as the slowly moving car obeyed all traffic laws and avoided oncoming traffic. When he stopped the car, Scott found an 11-year-old behind the wheel and his relaxed father in the passenger seat. Both face charges.

1941: Youngstown district steel makers declare that their fuel supplies are dwindling to “very close to the danger line” as dispatches from New York indicate that a settlement of the strike against soft-coal producers is near.

Youngstown Finance Director Walter W. Mitchell bars Vindicator reporter Richard Platt from his office after Platt writes about tension between Mitchell and Law Director John A. Willo.