YEARS AGO FOR FEB. 14

Today is Ash Wednesday, Feb. 14, the 45th day of 2018. There are 320 days left in the year. This is Valentine’s Day.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1663: New France (Canada) becomes a royal province under King Louis XIV.

1849: President James K. Polk becomes the first U.S. chief executive to be photographed while in office as he poses for Matthew Brady in New York City.

1903: The U.S. Department of Commerce and Labor is established.

1918: The musical “Sinbad,” starring Al Jolson and featuring the song “Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody,” opens on Broadway.

1929: The “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” takes place in a Chicago garage as seven rivals of Al Capone’s gang are gunned down.

2008: A former student dressed in black walks onto the stage of a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University and opens fire on a packed science class; the 27-year-old gunman kills five students before committing suicide.

2008: Double-amputee and Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius shoots and kills his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, at his home in Pretoria, South Africa; he was later convicted of murder.

2017: Authorities lift an evacuation order for nearly 200,000 Northern California residents living below the Oroville Dam after declaring that the risk of catastrophic collapse of a damaged spillway had been significantly reduced.

VINDICATOR FILES

1993: Beaver County Coroner Wayne Tatalovich rules the September death of Kristina Pander, 10, of Ellwood City, Pa., a homicide and is reopening an investigation into the earlier death of two of her sisters, Samantha, 21/2, and Carrie, 9 months.

Gov. George Voinovich denies clemency for one member of a Cleveland mob who killed Daniel Gilmore, 25, of Howland in 1988 after friends and family of Gilmore mount a petition campaign.

Coach Ed DiGregorio’s Youngstown State University Lady Penguins roll past Eastern Illinois, 71-56, for their eighth win in the Mid-Continent Conference.

1978: Warren Councilman Jack Beard wants to know why the budget for city employee cars has nearly doubled from $40,800 in 1975 to $79,300 in 1977.

Mahoning County is one of nine in Ohio that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is allowing to burn high-sulphur coal after the agency suspended air-pollution limitations during the state’s energy crisis.

Canfield High cage star Shirley Barnett, a 5-foot-5 senior, passed the 1,000 point mark while scoring 27 points in a game with Warren JFK.

1968: Youngstown and Warren are in the midst of a developing megalopolis that planners predict will see cities grow together in a band stretching from Pittsburgh to Chicago and Milwaukee by the year 2000, D. Bruce Mansfield, president of Ohio Edison, tells a Youngstown Area Chamber of Commerce breakfast.

Vare Corp., formerly Valley Mould & Iron Corp., plans to build the world’s biggest steel ingot mold plant, costing $10 million to $12 million near Toledo, Chairman William Ramage confirms.

H.E. Katschke, executive of the Mahoning Valley Boy Scout Council, will retire in March, ending an association with scouting that spans two generations.

1943: A delegation representing the area’s communities and steel plants will go to Washington to ask the War Production Board to recommend immediate construction of the Mosquito Creek Reservoir as a war measure.

Youngstown’s South Side should be well-protected by its air raid siren, which could be heard in Canfield during a test.