YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

Today is Tuesday, Feb. 2, the 33rd day of 2016. There are 333 days left in the year. This is Groundhog Day.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1653: New Amsterdam – now New York City – is incorporated.

1848: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the Mexican-American War, is signed.

1887: Punxsutawney, Pa., has its first Groundhog Day festival.

1914: Charles Chaplin makes his movie debut as the comedy short “Making a Living” is released by Keystone Film Co.

1925: The legendary Alaska Serum Run ends as the last of a series of dog mushers brings a life-saving treatment to Nome, the scene of a diphtheria epidemic, six days after the drug left Nenana.

1932: Duke Ellington and His Orchestra record “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” for Brunswick Records.

1942: A Los Angeles Times column by W.H. Anderson urges security measures against Japanese-Americans, arguing that a Japanese-American “almost inevitably ... grows up to be a Japanese, not an American.”

1943: The remainder of Nazi forces from the Battle of Stalingrad surrenders in a major victory for the Soviets in World War II.

1964: Ranger 6, a lunar probe launched by NASA, crashes onto the surface of the moon as planned, but fails to send back any TV images.

1971: Idi Amin, having seized power in Uganda, proclaims himself president.

1980: NBC News reports the FBI has conducted a sting operation targeting members of Congress using phony Arab businessmen in what would become known as “Abscam,” a code-name protested by Arab-Americans.

1990: In a dramatic concession to South Africa’s black majority, President F.W. de Klerk lifts a ban on the African National Congress and promises to free Nelson Mandela.

1992: Longtime “Miss America” emcee Bert Parks dies in La Jolla, Calif., at age 77.

2006: House Republicans elect John Boehner of Ohio as their new majority leader to replace the indicted Tom DeLay.

Tornadoes tear through New Orleans neighborhoods that had been hit hard by Hurricane Katrina five months earlier.

2007: Tornadoes kill 21 people in central Florida.

A grim report from the world’s leading climate scientists and government officials says that global warming is so severe, it will “continue for centuries” and that humans are to blame.

2014: Academy Award-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, 46, is found dead in his New York apartment from a combination of heroin, cocaine and other drugs.

2011: Supporters of President Hosni Mubarak charge into Cairo’s central square on horses and camels brandishing whips while others rain firebombs from rooftops in what appears to be an orchestrated assault against protesters trying to topple Egypt’s leader of 30 years.

2015: President Barack Obama sends Congress a record $4 trillion budget that will boost tax credits for families and the working poor but also raise taxes on the wealthy.

VINDICATOR FILES

1991: The same burglar apparently hit five Youngstown-area fast-food restaurants in the pre-dawn hours, taking safes from three of them.

Warren 6th Ward Councilman Arbie Freeman Jr. wants the city to establish a city office to assure that at least 35 percent of the city’s contracts go to minority businessmen.

Krista Morris, 17, and her parents bring a suit against the East Liverpool Board of Education seeking to force the inclusion of her picture in the yearbook despite her hand being visible in the photo. The printer of the yearbook has a policy prohibiting “pictures with hats, hands, drapes or outdoor shots.”

1976: More than 700 Youngstown-area aluminum workers, members of United Steelworkers Union locals, are on strike against seven aluminum producers in the Mahoning Valley.

Bitter cold, made worse by high winds, invades the Youngstown district, dropping temperatures to 6 degrees below zero with wind-chill factors of 40 below zero.

Eleven area high-school students will participate when the All-State Bicentennial band and choir performs for the 1976 convention of the Ohio Music Education Association at Ohio State University. The students are Jane Balog, Andy Schuller, Phillip Bickel, Ann Boydell, Annette Grodecki, Janet Johnson, Terri Teringo, Rebecca Carvin, Todd Harmon, David Merki and Mike Zampellla.

1966: Youngstown’s Greater Hospitals drive reaches $2.8 million toward its $4 million goal.

General Motors Corp. reports that it spent $1 billion on payrolls and local purchases in Ohio last year.

Ohio National Guardsmen, Trumbull County Civil Defense and Newton Falls police will have an “escape and evade” exercise designed to train soldiers to free important prisoners.

1941: Family Service Society of Youngstown gave assistance to an average of 176 families a month during 1940, down from 228 per month a year earlier.

A fire department of five men and two well-equipped trucks will guard the 21,000 acres Ravenna Arsenal under development near Newton Falls.

The story of Mill Creek Park is told in a 100-page book written by Edward Galaida of Michigan Avenue, Youngstown.