YEARS AGO FOR APRIL 17

Today is Tuesday, April 17, the 107th day of 2018. There are 258 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1492: A contract is signed by Christopher Columbus and a representative of Spain’s King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, giving Columbus a commission to seek a westward ocean passage to Asia.

1521: Martin Luther goes before the Diet of Worms to face charges stemming from his religious writings. (Luther would later be declared an outlaw by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.)

1861: Virginia State Convention votes to secede from the Union.

1924: The motion picture studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer is founded, the result of a merger of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures and the Louis B. Mayer Co.

1937: Cartoon character Daffy Duck debuts in the Warner Bros. animated short “Porky’s Duck Hunt.”

1961: Some 1,500 CIA-trained Cuban exiles launch the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in an attempt to topple Fidel Castro, whose forces would crush the incursion by the third day.

1964: Ford Motor Co. unveils the Mustang at the New York World’s Fair.

1972: The Boston Marathon allows women to compete for the first time.

2013: Fifteen people are killed when a fertilizer plant explodes in West, Texas.

VINDICATOR FILES

1993: U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. said he wants the federal government to pay the Mahoning Valley up to $200 million in damages if competition for a proposed Pentagon accounting center is scrapped and evidence shows the Valley would have won the competition.

Vincent Ryan, 32, of Canfield is in critical condition in Presbyterian University Hospital in Pittsburgh after a 15-hour transplant operation that gave him a new liver, pancreas, stomach and large and small intestine.

Two Mahoning County Joint Vocational School students capture first-place honors in the state Business Professionals of America Contest in Columbus. Joy Ramhoff and Kim Rininger will advance to national competition in San Antonio, Texas.

1978: A dozen cars of a Conrail freight train derail in Columbiana, causing heavy damage to two rail-side grain elevators owned by William K. Stamets Co.

Youngstown has the 16th-highest auto insurance rate among 100 major cities in the nation and ranks second in Ohio, behind Cleveland.

Youngstown Mayor J. Phillip Richley will meet with Gov. James A. Rhodes to work out final financing for the $13 million Albert Street Expressway so that construction can begin in the fall.

1968: Lt. Col. William Stone Jr., professor of military science at Youngstown Sate University, presents the Silver Star and Bronze Star to Charles E. Dufford, father of Spec. 4 Paul Dufford, West Middlesex, Pa., who was killed in action in Vietnam.

Officials of Ling-Temco-Vought Ins., the big Texas-headquartered conglomerate, approach Youngstown Sheet & Tube management but Sheet & Tube officials say they are not interested in a merger.

McCullough Williams Jr. is elected chairman of the Discipline Practices Committee of the Youngstown public schools, which was established by Superintendent Woodrow Zinser.

1943: A bust of John Nance Garner, vice president during President Roosevelt’s first two terms, is unveiled in the Senate reception room by Bascom M. Timmons, The Vindicator’s Washington correspondent and a close personal friend of Garner’s.

Fifty-eight members of the Chamber of Commerce are signed up in a membership campaign, which closed with a meeting of workers at the YMCA. The quota was 50.

Park department employees, including laborers, will be raised to same wage levels as other city employees.