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YEARS AGO

Saturday, April 30, 2016

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.