YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

Today is Sunday, April 17, the 108th day of 2016. There are 258 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1492: A contract is signed by Christopher Columbus and a representative of Spain’s King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, giving Columbus a commission to seek a westward ocean passage to Asia.

1861: The Virginia State Convention votes to secede from the Union.

1905: The U.S. Supreme Court, in Lochner v. New York, strikes down, 5-4, a New York State law limiting the number of hours that bakers could be made to work.

1937: Daffy Duck makes his debut in the Warner Bros. animated cartoon “Porky’s Duck Hunt.”

1961: Some 1,500 CIA-trained Cuban exiles launch the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in an attempt to topple Fidel Castro.

1964: Geraldine “Jerrie” Mock becomes the first woman to complete a solo airplane trip around the world as she returns to Columbus, Ohio, after 291/2 days in her Cessna 180.

Ford Motor Co. unveils the Mustang at the New York World’s Fair.

1970: Apollo 13 astronauts James A. Lovell, Fred W. Haise and Jack Swigert splash down safely in the Pacific, four days after a ruptured oxygen tank crippled their spacecraft while en route to the moon.

1991: The Dow Jones Industrial average closes above 3,000 for the first time, ending the day at 3,004.46, up 17.58.

2006: A Palestinian suicide bomber strikes a Tel Aviv restaurant during Passover, killing nine people.

VINDICATOR FILES

1991: Paul Miller, an Ohio Edison meter reader, is honored for saving the life of Rita Dibble, 35, of Leavittsburg, who had fallen in Whitman Court on March 8. She was unconscious, and her body temperature had fallen to 81 degrees when Miller found her and called police.

Youngstown authorities believe Satanists are involved in the mutilation of animals found on Poland Avenue. The latest, a dog, was decapitated and bound to an upside-down cross.

The Youngstown Metropolitan Housing Authority receives a federal grant for $846,500 to establish low-income housing outside of the city, a move that Mayor Patrick J. Ungaro enthusiastically supports.

1976: Trumbull Sheriff’s deputies are holding a 51-year-old Warren man in the stabbing death of Mosel Hurd, 50, the father of Moses Hurd, 22, who is serving 15-year-to-life sentence for the shooting death of Dominic Chiarella, a clerk at the Village Beverage Center.

An extensive power outage in Austintown is blamed on a bird that flew into the Kimberly Avenue substation, where its wings touched two wires.

Ken Kish, a 28-year-old head football coach at Warren Western Reserve High School, is appointed an assistant coach at Youngstown State University. He was a linebacker under the late Coach Dike Beede between 1966 and 1969.

1966: Approval of a 1-mill levy is necessary if Youngstown is to receive state money for construction of a Youngstown Community College. Matching money is needed for plans to move ahead.

A one-day, eight-hour driving improvement course is held for 140 members of the Pennsylvania State Police Troop D.

Thirty-eight members of Austintown Boy Scout Troop 84 plan a two-day trip to Detroit.

1941: The Mahoning County Engineer’s fleet of 40 trucks and passenger cars traveled 755,000 miles in 1940 at an average operating cost of 3 cents a mile, reports county engineer Robert Schomer.

Twenty Mahoning County selectees will leave from the Youngstown bus arcade as selective service replacements for men rejected in the sixth and eighth Army calls.