YEARS AGO FOR FEB. 26

Today is Monday, Feb. 26, the 57th day of 2018. There are 308 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1616: Astronomer Galileo Galilei met with a Roman Inquisition official, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, who ordered him to abandon the “heretical” concept of heliocentrism, which held that the earth revolved around the sun, instead of the other way around.

1815: Napoleon Bonaparte escapes from exile on the Island of Elba and heads back to France in a bid to regain power.

1904: The United States and Panama proclaims a treaty under which the U.S. agrees to undertake efforts to build a ship canal across the Panama isthmus.

1917: President Woodrow Wilson signs a congressional act establishing Mount McKinley National Park (now Denali National Park) in the Alaska Territory.

1993: A truck bomb built by Islamic extremists explodes in the parking garage of the North Tower of New York’s World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000 others. (The bomb failed to topple the North Tower into the South Tower, as the terrorists had hoped. Both structures were destroyed in the 9/11 attack eight years later.)

2017: At the 89th Academy Awards, “Moonlight,” an LGBT coming of age drama, wins three Oscars, including best picture of 2016 .

VINDICATOR FILES

1993: Medusa Aggregate’s plan to expand a sand and gravel dredging operation near the Mahoning River is drawing flak from Edinburg, Pa., neighbors who fear it could dry up or contaminate their wells.

Mill Creek Superintendent William Schollaert drafts a resolution for the park board that would ban feeding wildlife throughout the park, except at the Lily Pond.

Youngstown City Councilman Joseph Naples asks Police Chief Randall Wellington to track police response time over an eight-day period to gauge how long it takes officers to respond to calls for help.

1978: Siamese twins are born at North Side Hospital to Mr. and Mrs. Elias Rodriquez. Doctors at Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh say the boys, Timothy and Christopher, share a heart making successful separation impossible.

The Trumbull County Bookmobile will be phased out as increasing costs of operation make it a fiscally unsound investment.

Austintown Fitch, led by 167-pound ace Rex Luckage, recaptures the Class AAA sectional wrestling championship.

1968: Two Youngstown men are among four killed when their car collides with a tractor trailer on the Indiana Turnpike. Foster Dawson, 35, and Arnold Wallace, 28, were killed, and several others from Youngstown were injured in chain-reaction accidents involving vehicles that were en route to a Black Muslim convention in Chicago.

Two Youngstown students are among 16 injured when fire sweeps through the Delta Tau Delta fraternity house at Bowling Green State University: Steve Szpytko and Robert Heusser.

Six members of the Hubbard Ministerial Association purchase goods on a Sunday in supermarkets, grocery and dairy stores and intend to file charges of violation of Ohio’s blue law.

1943: The Mahoning Chapter of the American Red Cross launches its drive for a $368,000 war fund with a dinner at the YMCA attended by 650.

The YMCA is designated as the temporary headquarters for servicemen. The Y needs 100 razors for the weekend.

Wages of some 900 members of International Carriers, Building and Common Laborers’ Local 125 will be raised 15 to 20 cents an hour.