YEARS AGO FOR FEB. 19

Today is Monday, Feb. 19, the 50th day of 2018. There are 315 days left in the year. This is Presidents Day.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1473: Astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus is born in Torun, Poland.

1881: Kansas prohibits the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages.

1934: A blizzard begins inundating the northeastern United States, with the heaviest snowfall occurring in Connecticut and Massachusetts.

1942: During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, which paves the way for the relocation and internment of people of Japanese ancestry, including U.S.-born citizens.

1945: Operation Detachment begins during World War II as some 30,000 U.S. Marines begin landing on Iwo Jima, where they commence a successful monthlong battle to seize control of the island from Japanese forces.

1968: The children’s program “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” created by and starring Fred Rogers, makes its network debut on National Educational Television, a forerunner of PBS, beginning a 31-season run.

1976: President Gerald R. Ford, calling the issuing of Executive Order 9066 in 1942 “a sad day in American history,” signed a proclamation formally confirming its termination.

1997: Deng Xiaoping, the last of China’s major Communist revolutionaries, dies at age 92.

2017: Hundreds of scientists, environmental advocates and their supporters rally in Boston and other cities to protest what they see as increasing threats to science and research.

VINDICATOR FILES

1993: A thief made off with Police Chief Randall Wellington’s city-owned 1985 Oldsmobile while it was parked outside a neighborhood crime-watch meeting in Brownlee Woods.

NBC airs a segment of “Unsolved Mysteries” seeking to identify the woman who saved New Castle teenager Phillip Macris from drowning in the surf at Virginia Beach in 1987. Five women have come forward to claim the title of lifesaver.

President Bill Clinton takes questions at a high school in Chillicothe, Ohio, while promoting his proposed tax increases. Republicans say Clinton’s claim that 70 percent of the cuts will be paid by those making more than $100,000 a year is deceptive.

1978: The Citizens Advisory Committee of the Youngstown Community Development Agency asks government entities to boycott four insurance companies and two independent agencies that it accuses of blacklisting certain neighborhoods for homeowners insurance.

The Mahoning County commissioners are interested in buying the old main post office building at 9 W. Front St., but there are a few stumbling blocks, including financing.

1968: In an address to the Chesterton Club, Dr. Albert Pugsley, president of Youngstown State University, criticizes members of Students and Faculty for Peace who he says are asking for the university’s protection to protest against the Vietnam War on campus. The irony, he says, is that Vietnam is asking the United States to protect it against Leninism.

New Castle police hunt five armed robbers who tied up guards at the Shenango Ceramics Inc. and made off with gold paste, cash and stamps in a company truck.

1943: The Retail Merchants Board is encouraging the organization of “share the ride” shopping clubs to get shoppers from Youngstown’s outlying areas downtown.

Boardman Transit Co. is granted a permit to operate bus service between Boardman and Youngstown, but because many of its buses were taken over by the War Department, the company may lack buses for the line.