YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

Today is Saturday, April 30, the 121st day of 2016. There are 245 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1789: George Washington takes the oath of office in New York as the first president of the United States.

1803: The United States purchases the Louisiana Territory from France for 60 million francs, the equivalent of about $15 million.

1812: Louisiana becomes the 18th state of the Union.

1900: Engineer John Luther “Casey” Jones of the Illinois Central Railroad dies in a train wreck near Vaughan, Miss., after staying at the controls in a successful effort to save the passengers.

1939: The New York World’s Fair officially opens with a ceremony that includes an address by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

1945: As Soviet troops approach his Berlin bunker, Adolf Hitler commits suicide along with his wife of one day, Eva Braun.

1956: Former Vice President Alben W. Barkley, 78, collapses and dies while delivering a speech at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va.

1958: The American Association of Retired Persons (later simply AARP) is founded in Washington, D.C., by Dr. Ethel Percy Andrus.

1968: New York City police forcibly remove student demonstrators occupying five buildings at Columbia University.

1973: President Richard Nixon announces the resignations of top aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, Attorney General Richard G. Kleindienst and White House counsel John Dean, who actually was fired.

1975: The Vietnam War ends as the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon falls to Communist forces.

1988: Gen. Manuel Noriega, waving a machete, vows at a rally to keep fighting U.S. efforts to oust him as Panama’s military ruler.

1990: Hostage Frank Reed is released by his captives in Lebanon; he is the second American to be released in eight days.

2006: Thousands of people join celebrities and lawmakers at a rally on the National Mall in Washington, urging the Bush administration and Congress to help end genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region.

2011: A Libyan official says Moammar Gadhafi has escaped a NATO missile strike in Tripoli that killed one of his sons and three young grandchildren.

2015: Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont formally enters the race for the Democratic presidential nomination with a news conference on Capitol Hill.

VINDICATOR FILES

1991: Youngstown Mayor Patrick Ungaro rescinds the 20 layoffs he announced a week earlier, giving city council a month to develop a new revenue source, such as a trash fee.

The appellate court rules that 13 Warren patrolmen are performing their jobs illegally because they did not take and pass a Civil Service test within six months of their hiring. The court rules that the officers must compete with 160 applicants to keep their jobs.

1976: General Motors Corp. receives a $3.4 million order for 737 trucks that will be produced at the Lordstown van plant.

Two men are injured when an 81-year-old Russell Avenue man slams into the side of a city water department truck.

Ralph J. Garduno, 37, of Youngstown is sentenced to death in the electric chair for the February 1975 murder of Karl Netolicky in Atwater Township.

1966: Thomas S. O’Horo, 29, member of a prominent family of builders in the Mahoning Valley, is killed when his car leaves the road and strikes a tree on Route 7 just south of the Mahoning-Columbiana line.

Penny Price of Shields Road, a junior in the School of Education at Youngstown University, is crowned queen of the 1966 Spring Weekend.

A longtime dream of Salem children and recreation-minded adults is realized with the installation of 17 playground attractions at Waterworth Memorial Park.

1941: Patrick J. “Kit” O’Neill, promoter, six-day bicycle rider, industrialist and man-about-town, dies after a long illness. He was president of Youngstown Wire and Iron Works and brought the first airplane to Youngstown.

Midnight is the last chance for Vindicator readers to submit a name for Blondie and Dagwood Bumstead’s new daughter and win $100.

Judge Erskine Maiden sentences Youngstown Councilman John J. DelBene to five years’ probation for taking a $7,500 bribe but also orders his disenfranchisement, which means he no longer will be able to serve on city council.