YEARS AGO FOR FEB. 14

Today is Thursday, Feb. 14, the 45th day of 2019. 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.

1859: Oregon is admitted to the Union as the 33rd state.

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

1912: Arizona becomes the 48th state of the Union.

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

1876: Inventors Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray apply separately for patents related to the telephone.

2013: 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.

2018: A gunman identified as a former student opens fire with a semi-automatic rifle at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School near Fort Lauderdale, Fla., killing 17 people in the nation’s deadliest school shooting since the attack in Newtown, Conn., more than five years earlier.

VINDICATOR FILES

1994: Several dozen pickets are outside the Mahoning County Children Services Board offices at the county annex on Market Street as CSB workers go on strike for the first time.

Don L. Hanni Jr., chairman of the Mahoning County Democratic Party and his challenger, Michael Morley, are lining up candidates for 418 precinct committeemen races that will be decided in the May primary.

U.S. Rep. Tom Ridge of Erie wins the endorsement of the Pennsylvania Republican State Committee in his run for governor.

1979: With Mayor J. Phillip Richley at her side, Rosemary Durkin, Youngstown’s clerk of courts, announces she will run for the Democratic nomination for mayor. Richley has said he won’t seek a second term.

Groups of Youngstown area Miami Indians who have been meeting at the North American Indian Culture Center on Bryson Street say they will seek incorporation as the North Eastern U.S. Miami Inter-Tribal Council, which would make them the only recognized Miami council outside of Oklahoma.

Twenty auxiliary police officers are sworn in by Lowellville Mayor Alfred Russo. They will assist the police department, which has a chief, four full-time officers and two part-time officers.

1969: A $403,596 supplemental grant for improvement and modernization of low-rent public housing programs under the Youngstown Metropolitan Housing Authority is announced by Rep. Michael J. Kirwan.

Two armed bandits are believed responsible for three separate gas station robberies in Girard, Salem and North Jackson.

Youngstown Hospital Association receives $300,000 in Hill-Burton funds toward a $1.6 mil lion expansion of outpatient services at South Side Hospital.

1944: “Back the Attack” jingles are expected to pour into Youngstown stores by the thousands before the deadline for the jingle and sweetheart bondadier contest. A sample by Jean Mountford of Canfield: “It’s easier buying than dying/To help bring all our boys back/It’s great for us all to be trying/Buy bonds and help back the attack.”

Parts for the Army’s DUKWs, amphibian trucks equally at home on land or in the water and known as “ducks,” are made by Powell Pressed Steel in Hubbard, the Hull Manufacturing Co. and Packard Electric Division of General Motors in Warren.

Swimming would have been nice in the Mahoning River if the air hadn’t been so cold. With thermometers near zero, the river was not only ice free, but was running at 80 degrees.