Sunday, February 19, 2017
Today is Sunday, Feb. 19, the 50th day of 2017. There are 315 days left in the year.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
On this date in:
1881: Kansas prohibits the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages.
1915: During World War I, British and French warships launch their initial attack on Ottoman forces in the Dardanelles, a strait in northwestern Turkey. (The Gallipoli Campaign that followed proved disastrous for the Allies.)
1917: Carson McCullers, author of “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter” and “The Member of the Wedding,” is born Lula Carson Smith in Columbus, Ga.
1934: A blizzard begins inundating the northeastern United States, with the heaviest snowfall occurring in Connecticut and Massachusetts.
1942: During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, which authorizes the creation of U.S. military areas to relocate and intern people of Japanese ancestry, including American-born citizens
1945: Operation Detachment begins during World War II as some 30,000 U.S. Marines begin landing on Iwo Jima, where they begin a successful month-long battle to seize control of the island from Japanese forces.
1959: An agreement is signed by Britain, Turkey and Greece granting Cyprus its independence.
1963: “The Feminine Mystique” by Betty Friedan is first published by W.W. Norton &Co.
1976: President Gerald R. Ford, calling the issuing of Executive Order 9066 in 1942 “a sad day in American history,” signs a proclamation formally confirming its termination.
1984: The Winter Olympics closes in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia.
1986: The U.S. Senate approves, 83-11, the Genocide Convention, an international treaty outlawing “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” nearly 37 years after the pact was first submitted for ratification.
1997: Deng Xiaoping, the last of China’s major Communist revolutionaries, dies at age 92.
2008: An ailing Fidel Castro resigns the Cuban presidency after nearly a half-century in power; his brother Raul is later named to succeed him.
2012: Three skiers are killed when an avalanche sweeps them about a quarter-mile down an out-of-bounds canyon at Stevens Pass, Wash.
VINDICATOR FILES
1992: Warren Law Director Gregory Hicks says Municipal Judge Samuel Petkovich has been sidestepping state law that requires jail time for high-alcohol and multiple- offense drunken drivers.
The Warren Board of Education will cut 44 teachers from the city schools’ staff roster as the district takes money- saving steps toward vo-ed affiliation with the Trumbull County Joint Vocational School.
Packard Electric Division of General Motors will close its Austintown plant on Thatcher Lane that it opened in 1985.
1977: The first Pontiac Sunbird rolls off General Motors’ Lordstown assembly line, joining the Chevrolet Monza, Chevrolet Vega and Pontiac Astre as Lordstown products. The production goal is 85 cars per hour.
The Portage County coroner rules homicide in the death of Mrs. Mavis Price, 40, a Warren woman who died of a cerebral hemorrhage 10 years after being shot in the head by her estranged husband.
1967: Freedom lasts for only 40 hours for two men who escaped from the new Trumbull County Jail. They were arrested in Pittsburgh by FBI agents.
Mrs. Michael Kirwan, wife of veteran area congressman, accepts an invitation to christen a new Navy ammunition ship, the Kilanea, at the shipyard near Honolulu.
Dr. H.H. Wanamaker, superintendent of Youngstown schools, tells the board of education that schools should stay open Feb. 22, Washington’s Birthday, as a strike make-up day.
Youngstown area Girl Scouts and others throughout the Free World plan to celebrate “Thinking Day” to signify the unity of Girl Scouts and pay tribute to Juliette Low, Girl Scout founder.
1942: Jerry Pascarella, a 20-year-old petty racketeer who gained local fame for smashing slot machines, is wounded and “Billy the Greek” Scodras, who was used to lure Pascarella into a trap, is killed in a gangland shooting at Fifth and Madison avenues in Youngstown.
William F. Maag Jr., publisher of The Youngstown Vindicator, is unanimously elected a trustee of Kenyon College at Gambier, Ohio.
More than 5,000 books already have been collected in Mahoning County’s “Victory Book Campaign,” part of a nationwide drive to provide books for camp libraries. Boy Scouts are making a house-to-house canvass.