YEARS AGO

Today is Sunday, Feb. 21, the 52nd day of 2016. There are 314 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1613: Mikhail Romanov, 16, is unanimously chosen by Russia’s national assembly to be czar, beginning a dynasty that would last three centuries.

1885: The Washington Monument is dedicated.

1912: The Great Fifth Ward Fire breaks out in Houston, Texas; although property losses topped $3 million, no one was killed in the blaze.

1945: During the World War II Battle of Iwo Jima, the escort carrier USS Bismarck Sea is sunk by kamikazes with the loss of 318 men.

1958: The USS Gudgeon (SS-567) becomes the first American submarine to complete a round-the-world cruise, eight months after departing from Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

1965: Black Muslim leader and civil-rights activist Malcolm X, 39, is shot to death inside Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom in New York by assassins identified as members of the Nation of Islam. (Three men were convicted of murder and imprisoned; all eventually were paroled.)

1972: President Richard M. Nixon begins his historic visit to China as he and his wife, Pat, arrive in Beijing.

1975: Former Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman are sentenced to 21/2 to 8 years in prison for their roles in the Watergate cover-up (each ended up serving a year and a-half).

1986: Larry Wu-tai Chin, the first American found guilty of spying for China, kills himself in his Virginia jail cell.

1995: Chicago adventurer Steve Fossett becomes the first person to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean by balloon, landing in Leader, Saskatchewan, Canada.

2006: President George W. Bush endorses the takeover of shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports by a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates, and pledges to veto any bill Congress might approve to block the agreement.

Donald Herbert, a brain-injured Buffalo, New York, firefighter who suddenly speaks after nearly a decade in a near-vegetative state, dies at age 44.

2011: Deep cracks open in Moammar Gadhafi’s regime, with Libyan government officials at home and abroad resigning, air force pilots defecting and a major government building ablaze after clashes in the capital of Tripoli.

VINDICATOR FILES

1991: Cleveland Browns quarterback Bernie Kosar meets with his new coach, Bill Belichik, for the first time in Cleveland.

Mahoning County Prosecutor James A. Philomena says he likes to brag about buying cars for use by members of his staff from money seized in drug raids, but defense Atty. Timothy Franken says that while assistant prosecutors are getting a free ride, defense lawyers must pay 5 cents per page in advance for documents they need to defend their clients.

“Mean Joe” Greene, former Pittsburgh Steeler defensive lineman and a member of the Football Hall of Fame, appears at the Shenango campus of Penn State University for Black History Month and speaks on the theme, “Making Stumbling Blocks Your Stepping Stones.” Green said that as he approached graduation from North Texas State University in 1966, he decided to be a professional football player when he learned that teachers were making $6,000 a year.

1976: A jury of six men and two women are unable to reach a verdict in the trial of Youngstown Patrolman Ernest Paul, charged with assaulting Ronald Anzevino, 30, during a football game Sept. 27 at South High stadium.

Thousands of Youngs-town area Kathryn Kuhlman followers who have filled Stambaugh Auditorium over the years since Evangelist Kuhlman first visited Youngstown in 1948, are expected to attend a memorial service that will be held at the auditorium. She died in Tulsa, Okla., of a heart ailment.

Home Savings & Loan Co. holds a grand opening for its new Liberty Township office on Belmont Avenue. William Richardson is the office manager and members of his staff are Alice Reber, Linda Jones, Darlene Crain and Florence Kerrigan.

1966: Volunteers canvassing the tri-county area collected nearly $31,000, according to Dr. William H. Bunn Jr., president of the Heart Association of Eastern Ohio.

Trumbull County commissioners are considering a fair-housing rule that would discontinue sewer service to developers who discriminate.

Chester A. Amedia Jr., a senior at Hubbard High School, is elected president of Future Physicians of America at St. Elizabeth Hospital.

The canoe in which two Youngstown University students rode to their deaths in the Ohio River near Alliquippa, Pa., is recovered, but the bodies of Edwin Sekinger, 25, and Hugh Harper, 20, are missing. Joseph Lampich, 19, held onto a barge until he was rescued.

1941: Youngstown district steel production will reach a 12-year high at 97 percent of capacity with 76 open hearths and three Bessemer converters in operation.

Ella Mae Smith is chairman of the Patriotic Ball staged by sororities and fraternities of the Youngstown College business and secretarial schools.

Members of the First Baptist Church of Niles vote to replace the church that was destroyed by fire in January.

St. Paul’s Evangelical Church dedicates its new $26,000 chapel at Fifth Avenue and Caroline Street in Youngstown.