YEARS AGO FOR FEB. 20

Today is Tuesday, Feb. 20, the 51st day of 2018. There are 314 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1792: President George Washington signs an act creating the U.S. Post Office Department.

1816: The opera buffa “The Barber of Seville” by Gioachino Rossini premieres in Rome under its original title, “Almaviva, or the Useless Precaution.”

1862: William Wallace Lincoln, the 11-year-old son of President Abraham Lincoln and first lady Mary Todd Lincoln, dies at the White House, apparently of typhoid fever.

1907: President Theodore Roosevelt signs an immigration act that excludes “idiots, imbeciles, feebleminded persons” from entering the United States.

1942: Lt. Edward “Butch” O’Hare becomes the U.S. Navy’s first flying ace of World War II by shooting down five Japanese bombers while defending the aircraft carrier USS Lexington in the South Pacific.

1962: Astronaut John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth as he flies aboard Project Mercury’s Friendship 7 spacecraft, which circled the globe three times in a flight lasting 4 hours, 55 minutes and 23 seconds before splashing down safely in the Atlantic Ocean.

2003: A fire sparked by pyrotechnics breaks out during a concert by the group Great White at The Station nightclub in West Warwick, R.I., killing 100 people and injuring about 200 others. Among the victims is Ty Longley, Great White band member and a Sharon, Pa., native.

2017: President Donald Trump taps Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster as his new national security adviser, replacing the ousted Michael Flynn.

VINDICATOR FILES

1993: Opponents of a proposed federal prison in Elkrun Township say they want U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. to join them in their opposition, but instead heard him say he supports the project and will do what he can to make it a reality.

PL&W Railroad of Columbiana wants to buy the former Youngstown and Southern tracks and former P&LE tracks along Poland Avenue to complete its proposed route from Darlington, Pa., to the Trumbull County line.

Anticipating cuts in federal funding, Warren General Hospital will lay off 12 percent of its 711-person staff to save $3.4 million.

1978: The Ohio Division of Banks terminates the charter of the proposed Warren Family Bank after bank organizers failed to raise the required capital.

Fifty downtown Youngstown merchants and banks are participating in a free-parking promotion, providing one hour of free parking in Higbee’s Parkade or the Strouss parking garage.

Investigators are seeking a link between the firebombing of Cleveland’s Concerned Women’s Clinic and a fire in January that caused $200,000 in damage to a Columbus abortion clinic.

1968: Two men working on the No. 1 blast furnace at the Campbell Works of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. – Lee Powell, 45, and George Barbour, 59 – are reported in critical condition with burns suffered when molten metal came in contact with puddled water.

U.S. Rep. Michael Kirwan faces two opponents in the Democratic primary for nomination to a 17th term in Congress: Robert Hagan and Thomas Gilmartin.

1943: Berlin Reservoir will begin to form behind the $6 million dam to create the Youngstown area’s second-largest reservoir after a federal judge set aside Portage County’s opposition to begin filling the basin.

Ruth Finnie is in the first class of air evacuation nurses to receive diplomas at Bowman Field, Ky.