YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

Today is Thursday, Feb. 4, the 35th day of 2016. There are 331 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1783: Britain’s King George III proclaims a formal cessation of hostilities in the American Revolutionary War.

1789: Electors choose George Washington to be the first president of the United States.

1861: Delegates from six southern states that recently had seceded from the Union meet in Montgomery, Ala., to form the Confederate States of America.

1919: Congress establishes the U.S. Navy Distinguished Service Medal and the Navy Cross.

1932: New York Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt opens the Winter Olympic Games at Lake Placid.

1941: The United Service Organizations comes into existence.

1945: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin begin a wartime conference at Yalta.

1962: A rare conjunction of the sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn occurs.

1974: Newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, 19, is kidnapped in Berkeley, Calif., by the radical Symbionese Liberation Army.

1976: More than 23,000 people die when a severe earthquake strikes Guatemala with a magnitude of 7.5, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

1983: Pop singer-musician Karen Carpenter dies in Downey, Calif., at age 32.

1987: Pianist Liberace dies at his Palm Springs, Calif., home at age 67.

1997: A civil jury in Santa Monica, Calif., finds O.J. Simpson liable for the deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.

2004: The Massachusetts high court declares that gay couples are entitled to nothing less than marriage, and that Vermont-style civil unions would not suffice.

The social networking website Facebook has its beginnings as Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg launches “Thefacebook.”

2005: Actor and civil- rights activist Ossie Davis dies in Miami Beach, Fla., at age 87.

2006: Thousands of Syrians enraged by caricatures of the prophet Muhammad torch the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus. In Gaza, Palestinians march through the streets, storming European buildings and burning German and Danish flags.

A stampede at a Manila stadium results in 74 deaths.

Thousands of mourners pour into the Georgia Capitol rotunda to pay tribute to civil-rights activist Coretta Scott King.

2010: The first National Tea Party Convention opens in Nashville.

2011: President Barack Obama appeals to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to focus on his legacy and begin an orderly process to relinquish the power he’s held for 30 years; however, Obama stops short of calling for Mubarak’s immediate resignation.

2015: As Boston continues to dig out from more than 3 feet of snow in the previous week, the New England Patriots finally are honored with a parade celebrating their fourth Super Bowl win. Some fans defy police warnings and watch the parade from atop giant piles of snow.

VINDICATOR FILES

1991: Dennis Vitt, chairman of the Mahoning County Republican Party, says it is unacceptable, now that the state has a Republican governor, that Don L. Hanni III, son of the county Democratic Party chairman, is superintendent of the Ohio Department of Transportation garage in Mahoning County. But Hanni says he has a permanent claim to the job by virtue of civil service.

Susan Goterba says she has collected more than 1,000 signatures on a petition seeking to keep Hubbard city voters from voting for Hubbard Township officials.

Youngstown Mayor Patrick J. Ungaro is proposing a 22 percent increase in water rates to pay for modernization of the Mahoning Valley Sanitary District and replacement of the Kirk Road waterline.

1976: Louis J. Marciella, 59, the fiery member of the Youngstown Board of Education considered a champion by some parents and a bitter antagonist by others, is found dead of an apparent heart attack at the Austintown home to which he had moved a month earlier.

Niles City Council balks at a proposal by Mayor Arthur Doutt to shift funds from the sewer replacement fund to street repairs.

Donald Heffelfinger, a sanitary engineer for 42 years, retires as secretary of the Mahoning Valley Sanitary District, which supplies water to Niles and Youngstown. He will be succeeded by John E. Tucker.

1966: The Youngstown area urgently needs an additional airport south of the city to handle the growing number of executive planes, the state aviation director says.

“Project Growing Up” committee works to develop a course for Salem schools that would acquaint students with the uses and misuses of sex, alcohol, drugs and tobacco.

Leslie B. Worthington, president of U.S Steel Corp., tells the Youngstown Safety Council that a decrease in industrial accidents would bring America a higher standard of living.

1941: Pliny H. Powers, superintendent of Youngstown schools for three years, resigns to take a position of professor of education at New York University.

Steel production in the Mahoning Valley was at 94 percent in January, a record for the month, and payrolls were up 30 percent over those of January a year earlier.

J.D. Roller Cadillac Co. is selling new Cadillac five-passenger coupes for $1,345. An ad boasts that the car gets 14 to 17 miles per gallon.