YEARS AGO FOR JUNE 2

Today is Friday, June 2, the 153rd day of 2017. There are 212 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1897: Mark Twain is quoted by the New York Journal as saying from London that “the report of my death was an exaggeration.” (Twain, in London to cover Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee for the Journal, was responding to a report in the New York Herald that he was “grievously ill” and “possibly dying.”)

1924: Congress passes, and President Calvin Coolidge signs, a measure guaranteeing full American citizenship for all Native Americans born within U.S. territorial limits.

1941: Baseball’s “Iron Horse,” Lou Gehrig, dies in New York of a degenerative disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; he was 37.

1953: The coronation of Queen Elizabeth II takes place in London’s Westminster Abbey, 16 months after the death of her father, King George VI.

1983: Half of the 46 people aboard an Air Canada DC-9 are killed after fire broke out on board, forcing the jetliner to make an emergency landing at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.

1997: Timothy McVeigh is convicted of murder and conspiracy in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people. (McVeigh was executed in June 2001.)

2012: Ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is sentenced to life in prison after a court convicted him on charges of complicity in the killing of protesters during the 2011 uprising that forced him from power (Mubarak was later acquitted and freed in March 2017).

VINDICATOR FILES

1992: Hazardous waste is seeping into a stream that empties into Yankee Lake, but friends and supporters of the Frank Kish family tell Fowler Township trustees that the pollution isn’t coming from the now-closed Fowler Landfill.

McNeill Akron Inc., which became the largest manufacturer of tire-making equipment when it bought NRM Steelastic in Columbiana, announces that the last 125 workers at the Columbiana site are being laid off.

John C. Walzer, 95, who survived three combat offensives in France during World War I, dies of injuries received when a limousine he was riding in the New Castle Memorial Day parade went out of control and crashed into a brick wall.

1977: The mother of a first-grade student at Currie Elementary School in the Fowler-Vienna School District files suit seeking an injunction barring the child’s teacher from conducting prayer in the classroom. The suit says teacher Carolyn Peterson leads the class in prayer three times a day.

1967: A 3-year-old Newton Falls boy, Robert J. McKay, is asphyxiated when he falls into the vault of an outside toilet while visiting an uncle on Briggs Road in Leavittsburg.

Dr. Albert Pugsley, Youngstown University president, presents honorary degrees to two men who spent their lifetimes building YU from a small private college to what will be Ohio’s newest state university: Dr. Joseph E. Smith and Dr. Howard W. Jones.

1942: Four Youngstown men are reported missing in action by the Navy and Marines: Carl A. Carlson Jr., Donald P. Barrett, Robert T. Davies Jr. and George Tarkanish. Also reported missing is John Oleska Jr. of McDonald.

John Kusnic of Youngstown, who helped rescue survivors from the U.S.S. Langley and U.S.S. Pecos south of Java, is promoted to fire controlman first class in the Navy.

Elementary-school teachers’ maximum salaries will be boosted from $2,000 to $2,600. They have been dissatisfied with salaries $1,100 lower than those of high school teachers.