YEARS AGO

Today is Wednesday, Feb. 1, the 32nd day of 2017. There are 333 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1865: During the Civil War, Union forces led by Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman begin the Carolinas Campaign as they invade South Carolina.

1946: Norwegian statesman Trygve Lie is chosen to be the first secretary-general of the United Nations.

1959: Men in Switzerland reject giving women the right to vote by a more than 2-1 referendum margin. (Swiss women gained the right to vote in 1971.)

1960: Four black college students begin a sit-in protest at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., where they’d been refused service.

1968: During the Vietnam War, South Vietnam’s police chief executes a Viet Cong officer with a pistol shot to the head in a scene captured by news photographers.

2003: The space shuttle Columbia breaks up during re-entry, killing all seven of its crew members.

VINDICATOR FILES

1992: Youngstown, where the World Basketball League was conceived, will become its new headquarters and Dr. John Geletka, a Mahoning Valley booster of the league, is named WBL commissioner.

Joe Caruso of Warren, a sign-language teacher at Choffin Career Center, says the Americans with Disabilities Act will open up job opportunities for sign-language interpreters.

Andria D’Amato, 9, a third-grader at St. Anthony School, wins a nationwide Christmas-card contest sponsored by a California card company. Her winning verse read: “Hope you have the best Christmas ever. Spread love and happiness around the world.”

1977: Chessie System railroad crews are working to dig out a 30-car, two-engine freight train that became stranded in 16-foot snowdrifts in Farmington, blocking state Route 534 about a mile south of state Route 88.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will not conduct an ecological-impact study on the $525,000 McKelvey Lake sewage collection project, a decision that should expedite the project.

The office of Community and Congressional Relations recommends to the Civil Aeronautics Board that United Airlines be ordered to reinstate two nonstop flights from Youngstown to New York City and that Allegheny Airlines be prohibited from stopping service to Pittsburgh.

1967: A warrant for child stealing is filed in Youngstown Municipal Court against a West Virginia woman accused of stealing her natural born son from the West Side couple that adopted the 7-year-old boy 16 months earlier.

Mrs. Gilbert Schnurrenberger, district insurance agent, is named Boss of the Year at the 21st annual bosses’ night hosted by the Yo-Mah-O Chapter of the National Secretaries Association at the Mural Room.

As the Campbell safety forces strike continues, fires destroy two vacant homes in the Washington Street urban renewal area and roofing nails are strewn on the police parking lot.

1942: James L. Wick, president of the Butler Friends of Art, presents two water-color paintings to the Youngstown public schools, one of which is “Black Narcissus,” painted by Fred Alexander of New Castle, Pa.

Mahoning County’s iron and steel scrap collection is a success and will be a model for similar drives in 3,000 counties throughout the United States.

Since natural gas makes a hotter flame than blast furnace gas, Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corp. has boosted the capacity of its Youngstown sintering plant by 40 percent since switching to natural gas.