YEARS AGO FOR APRIL 14

Today is Saturday, April 14, the 104th day of 2018. There are 261 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1775: The first American society for the abolition of slavery is formed in Philadelphia.

1828: The first edition of Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language is published.

1865: President Abraham Lincoln is shot and mortally wounded by John Wilkes Booth during a performance of “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theater in Washington.

1912: The British liner RMS Titanic collides with an iceberg in the North Atlantic at 11:40 p.m. ship’s time and begins sinking. (The ship went under two hours and 40 minutes later with the loss of 1,514 lives.)

1939: The John Steinbeck novel “The Grapes of Wrath” is first published by Viking Press.

1968: The gay-themed play “The Boys in the Band,” by Mart Crowley, opens in New York.

1994: Two U.S. Air Force F-15 warplanes mistakenly shoot down two U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopters over northern Iraq, killing 26 people, including 15 Americans.

2008: Delta Air Lines Inc. and Northwest Airlines Corp. announce they are combining.

2017: Pope Francis, at the end of a 90-minute Good Friday procession, reads a prayer he had composed that alternated between expressing shame for humanity’s failings and hope that “hardened hearts” would become capable of forgiving and loving.

VINDICATOR FILES

1993: Eight teenagers from Boardman and Youngstown, members of First Covenant Church on Glenwood Avenue, are spending their spring vacation in southern Florida, helping clean up debris from Hurricane Andrew.

Youngstown Atty. George Limbert, Mahoning County finance chairman for Gov. George Voinovich, is named to a nine-year term on the Youngstown State University Board of Trustees, replacing Dr. Ernest Perry, whose term expired.

Ohio prison officials put a blackout on news from the prison at Lucasville, where inmates continue to hold eight guards as hostages.

In an extraordinary collaboration by Detroit automakers, the Big Three – General Motors, Ford and Chrysler – are discussing jointly building an electric car.

1978: New Castle’s long-standing problems with the Cascade Amusement Co. have been resolved with a new contract that assures most of the rides, concessions and amusements will open on schedule at Cascade Park.

Two 15-year-old boys are found delinquent by involuntary manslaughter in the death of Julian Morales Jr., 3, who was killed by a rock thrown from a Madison Avenue Expressway overpass. Sentencing will come at a later date.

Five area students are among 1,410 in the nation who won corporate sponsored National Merit Scholarships: Brian Williamson, Brookfield; James Zerefos, Warren Harding; Wendy Meade, Jefferson; DeWayne Anderson, Hickory, and Allison Heald, Greenville.

1968: In New Castle, Joseph Croach will teach the first high school course in Chinese ever offered in Pennsylvania beginning in the fall.

A noisy thunderstorm accompanied by high winds, heavy rain and spectacular lightning rumbles through the Youngstown area.

1943: Two Youngstown district convicts are recaptured after an escape from Alcatraz that claimed the lives of two others. Flushed out of a cave was Fred Hunter, 43, of Warren, former pal of post office and train robber “Creepy” Karpis. Harold M. Brest, 31, Sharon, Pa., bank robber, was pulled naked from the water.

Two East Side brothers, 12 and 13, admit breaking into three schools. They were picked up in a downtown bar after sleeping one night in the Bus Arcade.