YEARS AGO

Today is Wednesday, Feb. 8, the 39th day of 2017. There are 326 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1587: Mary, Queen of Scots, is beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle in England after she was implicated in a plot to murder her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I.

1910: Boy Scouts of America is incorporated.

1915: D.W. Griffith’s groundbreaking as well as controversial silent movie epic about the Civil War, “The Birth of a Nation,” premieres in Los Angeles under its original title, “The Clansman.”

1922: President Warren G. Harding has a radio installed in the White House.

1968: Three college students are killed in a confrontation with highway patrolmen in Orangeburg, S.C., during a civil-rights protest against a whites-only bowling alley.

2007: Model, actress and tabloid sensation Anna Nicole Smith dies in Hollywood, Fla., at 39 of an accidental drug overdose.

2012: Kyle Dyer, an anchor for Denver station KUSA-TV, is seriously injured when she is bitten in the face by an 85-pound Argentine mastiff while conducting a live studio interview on the dog’s rescue from an icy pond.

2016: President Barack Obama asks Congress for more than $1.8 billion in emergency funding to fight the Zika virus.

VINDICATOR FILES

1992: U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr., D-Poland, proposes taking half the money going toward foreign aid and giving it to local governments and school districts.

Most Mahoning Valley school districts show improvement on the latest ninth-grade proficiency tests.

Robert C. Stempel, chairman of General Motors, calls for a cease-fire in the war of words between the U.S. and Japan, saying, “name-calling doesn’t get anybody anything.”

1977: The executive board of the Youngstown Board of Trade indicates it may support a proposed half-percent piggyback sales tax for Mahoning County but only if there are assurances that the money will be spent wisely.

Paul Fink, 69, of New Springfield dies of carbon- monoxide poisoning from an unvented kerosene heater used at his home on South Range Road. His brother, Carl, 66, is hospitalized.

State Rep. Charles Kurfess, GOP leader in the Ohio House of Representatives, tells those at the 62nd annual Mahoning Valley McKinley Club dinner that Democrats respond more to partisan dictates than to the needs of the people.”

1967: Ajax Magnethermic Corp of Warren receives a $7.1 million order from McLouth Steel Corp. of Trenton, Mich.

Five nuns, all teachers at St. Nicholas School in Struthers, are injured when their car slides out of control on ice on Rush Boulevard and strikes a tree near Florida Avenue. They are Sisters Christopher, Mary Paul, Paula, Mary Helen and Carla.

Area temperatures range from one below zero in downtown Youngstown to 19 below zero in Columbiana County. The Youngstown Automobile Club reports motorists’ calls for help came in at the rate of two a minute.

Repairs on Youngstown City Hall elevators knocked out of commission by fire are delayed by a threat of picketing by Local 40, Elevator Constructors Union.

1942: Most of Youngstown’s retail merchants, including grocers, will continue to give individual delivery services, but will begin restricting deliveries. Customers will be encouraged to carry packages when possible.

D.W. Willard, 45, of 1630 Himrod Ave., is kidnapped and robbed of more than $500 by two men who stopped him at Erie and Pyatt streets and forced him to drive to Pennsylvania.

Mahoning residents are urged to save tubes such as those used for toothpaste, shaving cream, ointments and other products and turn them in to drugstores in a national campaign.