YEARS AGO FOR APRIL 2

Today is Tuesday, April 2, the 92nd day of 2019. There are 273 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1792: Congress passes the Coinage Act, which authorizes establishment of the U.S. Mint.

1865: Confederate President Jefferson Davis and most of his Cabinet flee the Confederate capital of Richmond, Va., because of advancing Union forces.

1917: President Woodrow Wilson asks Congress to declare war against Germany, saying, “The world must be made safe for democracy.” (Congress declared war four days later.)

1956: The soap operas “As the World Turns” and “The Edge of Night” premiere on CBS-TV.

1982: Several thousand troops from Argentina seize the disputed Falkland Islands, located in the south Atlantic, from Britain.

2003: During the Iraq War, American forces fight their way to within sight of the Baghdad skyline.

2005: Pope John Paul II dies in his Vatican apartment at age 84.

2014: The Supreme Court’s conservative majority votes 5-4 to free wealthy individuals to donate to as many political candidates and campaigns as they wanted, further loosening the reins on giving by big contributors.

2018: Anti-apartheid activist Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, who’d been married for nearly 38 years to Nelson Mandela, dies in a Johannesburg hospital at the age of 81.

VINDICATOR FILES

1994: WHOT Radio broadcasts an April Fools’ Day story reporting the opening of I-2, a revitalized Idora Park. Some people, missing the joke, drive to the park in hopes of seeing the roller coasters operating, but they find the gates locked.

A lawsuit seeking to halt a $109 million improvement project at the Mahoning Valley Sanitary District is put on hold after U.S. Rep. James Traficant says he will seek a reduction in federal regulations on the water authority.

Youngstown State University President Leslie Cochran is quoted in a story in the Chronicle on Higher Education in which he described his efforts to provide academic scholarships in the same numbers as athletic scholarships. He said when he arrived at YSU there were 150 athletic scholarships; he has instituted 160 scholarships for musicians, mathematicians and other academic stars.

1979: Karen Weiselberg, president of the Warren Education Association, says an impasse exists between the district’s 670 teachers and the Board of Education in negotiations for a new contract.

Strikes idle three East Palestine businesses, L.W.Nash Co., Adamson Manufacturing Co. and the Herriott Trucking Co.

More than 1,600 people attend an open house at the Main Library sponsored by Friends of the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County to kick off National Library Week.

1969: The Youngstown Board of Control authorizes the sale of 18 lots on Covington and Harmony streets in the urban renewal area to the Child and Adult Mental Health Center Inc.

Seventy-five Struthers teachers end a one-day strike after the school board agrees to increase the base salary from $5,600 a year to $6,000 and provide fully paid hospitalization if a levy on the May ballot passes.

The Youngstown Police Department’s master cruiser, formerly known as “The Flying Machine” from its inception in 1943, has been put on 24-hour duty to strengthen the fight against the city’s increasing crime rate.

1944: The Mahoning Valley has only about 23 billion gallons of water stored in its three main low-flow reservoirs, or less than one-third their capacity of 73 billion gallons to safeguard Youngstown steel operations next summer and fall.

Mark Fitch, 70, and Stephen Banjok, 65, are fatally burned when a 55-gallon drum of paint explodes at Commercial Shearing & Stamping Co.

James Blake, gunner’s mate 3rd class, receives a Purple Heart for wounds suffered in action in the Southwest Pacific area.