YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

Today is Friday, Feb. 19, the 50th day of 2016. There are 316 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1942: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, clearing the way for the U.S. military to relocate and intern people of Japanese ancestry (including U.S.-born citizens) during World War II.

1945: Operation Detachment begins during World War II as some 30,000 U.S. Marines begin landing on Iwo Jima, where they commence a successful monthlong battle to seize control of the island from Japanese forces.

1976: Calling the issuing of Executive Order 9066 “a sad day in American history,” President Gerald R. Ford issues a proclamation confirming that the order has been terminated with the formal cessation of hostilities of World War II.

1986: The U.S. Senate approves, 83-11, the Genocide Convention, an international treaty outlawing “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” nearly 37 years after the pact had first been submitted for ratification.

2008: An ailing Fidel Castro resigns the Cuban presidency after nearly a half-century in power; his brother Raul is later named to succeed him.

VINDICATOR FILES

1991: Reacting to the voters’ rejection of a 6.5-mill levy in a special election in January, the Brookfield Board of Education votes 3-2 to suspend spring sports: boys and girls track, boys baseball and girls softball.

A pre-dawn brawl involving 20 youths between 15 and 20 years old in the parking lot of Austintown Cycle on Fitch Boulevard results in two boys being treated at St. Elizabeth Hospital and three young men charged with aggravated riot.

Sammy Fleisher, the 11-year-old Sharpsville boy whose need for a bone-marrow transplant inspired a drive that saw 3,000 people tested in an unsuccessful search for a match, dies of leukemia in St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis.

1976: Youngstown Mayor Jack C. Hunter submits a disclosure statement of his worth to city council. His house on Boston Avenue is valued at $16,500, he has a stock portfolio of $5,779 and savings of $6,697, a $1,000 coin collection and a 1964 Ford valued at $250. His only income is his mayoral salary of $31,132.

Responding to a petition signed by 1,000 people, U.S. Rep. Charles J. Carney asks the FBI to enter the case of David Evans, 13, of Boardman Township, whose frozen body was found Jan. 14, 1975, six days after he disappeared.

1966: The Salem Board of Education approves a record appropriation of $1.7 million for 1966, a 10 percent increase over 1965.

Three men are fined $100 and sentenced to 30 days in jail after being found guilty of drunken driving by Youngstown Municipal Court Judge John J. Leskovyansky.

Richland County Probate Judge Charles Freehafer orders the sterilization of two pregnant sisters, 19 and 21, who he adjudged to be mentally incompetent. The girls’ mother requested the sterilization, which Freehafer said he was empowered to do under Ohio law regarding the care of feeble-minded people.

1941: The Rev. John Gass, rector of the famed Church of the Incarnation in New York City and one of the most renowned Episcopal rectors in the East, will take the pulpit at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Youngstown from Ash Wednesday through Easter.

Boake Carter, an outspoken radio commentator, tells a crowd of 1,400 in Warren that Russia is near revolution, and Great Britain will emerge from the war as a socialist state.

Youngstown College students are 100 percent for taking up arms to defend the physical boundaries of the United States, but only 50 percent are willing to fight on foreign soil, a plebiscite conducted by the student newspaper, The Jambar, shows.