YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

Today is Friday, Jan. 1, the first day of leap year 2016. There are 365 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1660: Englishman Samuel Pepys begins keeping his famous diary.

1863: President Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that slaves in rebel states shall be “forever free.”

1913: The U.S. Parcel Post system goes into operation.

1935: The Associated Press inaugurates Wirephoto, the first successful service for transmitting photographs by wire to member newspapers.

1945: France is admitted to the United Nations.

1953: Country singer Hank Williams Sr., 29, is discovered dead in the back seat of his car during a stop in Oak Hill, W. Va., while he was being driven to a concert date in Canton, Ohio.

1959: Fidel Castro and his revolutionaries overthrow Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista, who flees to the Dominican Republic.

1975: A jury in Washington finds Nixon administration officials John N. Mitchell, H.R. Haldeman, John D. Ehrlichman and Robert C. Mardian guilty of charges related to the Watergate cover-up (Mardian’s conviction for conspiracy later was overturned on appeal).

1979: The United States and China have celebrations in Washington and Beijing to mark the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

1984: The breakup of AT&T takes place as the telecommunications giant is divested of its 22 Bell System companies under terms of an antitrust agreement.

1994: The North American Free Trade Agreement goes into effect.

1995: The World Trade Organization comes into being, replacing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

Sweden, Finland and Austria join the European Union.

2014: The nation’s first legal recreational-pot shops open in Colorado at 8 a.m. Mountain time.

2006: President George W. Bush strongly defends his domestic-spying program, calling it legal as well as vital to thwarting terrorist attacks.

The Medicare prescription drug plan goes into effect.

2011: A suicide bomber kills 21 people outside a church in Alexandria, Egypt, in one of the country’s worst attacks targeting Coptic Christians.

2015: Mario Cuomo, 82, a leading liberal voice who served three terms as governor of New York, dies just hours after his son Andrew begins his second term as the state’s chief executive.

Actress Donna Douglas, who played the buxom tomboy Elly May Clampett on the hit 1960s sitcom “The Beverly Hillbillies,” dies in Baton Rouge, La., at age 82.

VINDICATOR FILES

1991: Warren Township firefighters use rowboats to rescue Leavittsburg residents stranded by rising waters from the Mahoning River.

Sharon Steel Corp. closes out 1990 by distributing $4.6 million, an average of about $2,200 per employee, as the first step toward settling debts to its employee stock-ownership plan.

A federal judge rules that the Boardman Local School District violated the law by refusing to promote Alicia Domalewski from cleaning attendant to custodian because she is a woman. The court orders that she be paid a custodian’s wage beginning immediately and be promoted to custodian when a job opens.

1976: Chester W. Bailey, who was the quarterback in South High’s illustrious 1925 backfield and a power in Mahoning County Republican politics into the 1950s, resigns as Youngstown postmaster after 16 years in the job.

Youngstown Osteopathic Hospital increases charges for a semiprivate room by $7 to $95 per day and by $14 to $185 a day for intensive- and coronary-care rooms.

Increasing gasoline prices and a national speed limit of 55 mph fail to halt the loss of life on Mahoning County highways, with 46 traffic fatalities in 1975, four more than a year before.

1966: Youngstown district steel mills begin 1966 operating at about 50 percent of capacity with the strong chance that the operating level and employment will rise sharply by the end of the month.

Infant Eugene, son of Mr. and Mrs. Marvin J. Redding, is the first New Year’s baby born in Youngstown hospitals, arriving at 12:08 a.m. in North Side Hospital.

For the 10th-consecutive year, Youngstown and Mahoning County go through New Year’s Eve and Day without a traffic fatality, but Trumbull County registers its first two road deaths just 37 minutes into the new year. Killed were Robert L. Bailes, 22, and Paul G. Fejko, 25, when their cars collided on Route 422 north of Warren.

1941: About 25 Youngstown Democrats are seeking the postmastership held by the late Alvin Crater.

Youngstown’s greeting of the New Year is the biggest celebration in years. Residents spent an estimated $750,000 on food, liquor and entertainment at 700 nightspots and theaters.

Regardless of European war conditions, 1941 is expected to be a record-breaking year in Youngstown, with steel production at 90 percent of capacity.