YEARS AGO FOR FEB. 8

Today is Thursday, Feb. 8, the 39th day of 2018. 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.

1862: The Civil War Battle of Roanoke Island, N.C., ends in victory for Union forces led by Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside.

1910: The Boy Scouts of America is incorporated.

1942: During World War II, Japanese forces begin invading Singapore, which would fall a week later.

1952: Queen Elizabeth II proclaims her accession to the British throne after the death of her father, King George VI.

1968: Three college students are killed in a confrontation between demonstrators and highway patrolmen at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg in the wake of protests over a whites-only bowling alley.

1993: General Motors sues NBC, alleging that “Dateline NBC” had rigged two car-truck crashes to show that 1973 to ’87 GM pickups were prone to fires in side impact crashes. (NBC settled the lawsuit the following day and apologized for its “unscientific demonstration.”)

2013: A massive storm packing hurricane-force winds and blizzard conditions sweeps through the Northeast, dumping nearly 2 feet of snow on New England and knocking out power to more than a half-million customers.

VINDICATOR FILES

1993: Mahoning County health officials launch a cooperative program, the Infant Immunization Task Force, to make childhood immunizations readily available.

Census figures from 1990 show Trumbull County with a poverty rate of 11.4 percent and Mahoning and Columbiana counties at 15.9 percent.

1978: Ed Mann, president of USW Local 1462, says morale at the Brier Hill Works of Youngstown Sheet & Tube “has hit bottom” after Mayor Phillip Richley’s disclosure of a pending merger between Lykes Corp. and LTV, which would probably presage the closure of Brier Hill.

McDonald Mayor Thomas Leskovac says a treatment center for drunken-driving violators at the former Sacred Heart Convent on Ohio Avenue violates village zoning regulations and must be closed.

A man who attempted to rob cashier Patty Thompson at the Mahoning County treasurer’s office loses his nerve and flees the courthouse empty-handed.

1968: Ten state liquor agents swoop down on a Campbell cheat spot, the 3270 Club on Wilson Avenue, a block from the police station, surprising 54 people in the place and arresting two.

The Youngstown Metropolitan Housing Authority plans to apply for extensive housing programs are referred to city council’s finance committee. One proposal is for a $6 million, 300-unit complex for the elderly.

Four men bilk a North Side man, Oza Sampler, of his $1,600 life savings, giving him a package of shredded newspaper in exchange for the money.

1943: Five Niles men arrested on an affidavit filed by the Rev. H.M. Kirkpatrick, pastor of Gospel Baptist Tabernacle, on charges of possessing gambling devices are fined $50 each. The Rev. Kirkpatrick conducted citizen-raids on places with slot machines or marble boards.

Quick action by Charles Clark in lowering his wife, infant son and three small children from a second-floor bedroom on a sheet is credited with saving their lives. The home on Greenwood Avenue is destroyed.