YEARS AGO

Today is Thursday, Feb. 2, the 33rd day of 2017. There are 332 days left in the year. This is Groundhog Day.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1887: Punxsutawney, Pa., has its first Groundhog Day festival.

1914: Charles Chaplin makes his movie debut in the comedy short “Making a Living.”

1932: Duke Ellington and His Orchestra record “It Don’t Mean a Thing [If It Ain’t Got That Swing]” for Brunswick Records.

1959: Public schools in Arlington and Norfolk, Va., are racially desegregated without incident.

1980: NBC News reports the FBI has conducted a sting operation targeting members of Congress using phony Arab businessmen in what became known as “Abscam,” a codename protested by Arab-Americans.

1992: Longtime Miss America emcee Bert Parks dies in La Jolla, Calif., at 77.

2007: Tornadoes kill 21 people in central Florida.

2012: Donald Trump announces his endorsement of Republican Mitt Romney for president.

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1992: Warren and Trumbull County authorities are investigating the December rape of a 7-week old baby in Warren, which is the youngest sexual assault victim Warren Detective Mark Massucci has seen.

The rules for winning a $1 million bonus in Phar-Mor golf tournaments are changed to provide that the bonus be paid to any player winning the Phar-Mor tournaments at Youngstown and Lauderhill, Fla., in a row, but not necessarily in the same golf season.

Trumbull County Engineer Edward Ryser says the theft of street signs creates dangers on township roads. A “High Street” sign in Howland has been stolen at least 10 times, and street signs in Hartford are being stolen so often that township officials have stopped replacing them.

1977: Edmond Moore Hamilton, 72, of Kinsman and Lancaster, Calif., dean of American science fiction writers, dies of complications after kidney surgery in California. The Youngstown-born writer and his author wife, Leigh Brackett, did much of their writing in their 1830 farmhouse on Orangeville-Kinsman Road.

George H. Schoenhard, former supervisor of child accounting for Youngstown public schools, says he would have changed school boundaries to desegregate the district if he had been ordered to do so by superiors.

More than 1,000 employees of the Packard Electric Division of General Motors will be laid off as a result of production cutbacks at several GM assembly plants.

1967: Hugh A. Frost, the first Negro member of the Youngstown Board of Education, is seeking the Republican nomination for mayor, making him the first Negro candidate for the city’s mayor.

Fire damage amounting to about $5,000 was caused by a short circuit in elevator wiring on the seventh floor of City Hall.

Youngstown City Council passes an ordinance requiring all vehicles to be removed from through streets when snowfall exceeds 4 inches in 24 hours.

1942: Freda Thiel of Lowellville, an American nurse serving with the American Expeditionary Force, is shown in an International Press photo caring for a soldier from Iowa hospitalized in Northern Ireland with the flu.

Youngstown’s first training sessions for air-raid wardens will be confined to ex-servicemen, postal employees, public-school teachers and attorneys.

The 19 Hudsons bought by the city for $995 each on the grounds that they met the police department’s request for “heavier” cruisers are actually 105 pounds lighter than Chevrolets that cost $890.