YEARS AGO FOR FEB. 15

Today is Friday, Feb. 15, the 46th day of 2019. There are 319 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1798: A feud between two members of the U.S. House of Representatives boils over as Roger Griswold of Connecticut uses a cane to attack Vermont’s Matthew Lyon, who defends himself with a set of tongs. (Griswold was enraged over the House’s refusal to expel Lyon for spitting tobacco juice in his face two weeks earlier.)

1898: The U.S. battleship Maine mysteriously blows up in Havana Harbor, killing more than 260 crew members and bringing the United States closer to war with Spain.

1933: President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt escapes an assassination attempt in Miami that killed Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak.

1961: Seventy-three people, including an 18-member U.S. figure skating team en route to the World Championships in Czechoslovakia, are killed in the crash of a Sabena Airlines Boeing 707 in Belgium.

1989: The Soviet Union announces the last of its troops have left Afghanistan, after more than nine years of military intervention.

1992: A Milwaukee jury finds that Jeffrey Dahmer was sane when he killed and mutilated 15 men and boys.

2018: The last of the bodies of the 17 victims of a school shooting in Parkland, Fla., a day earlier are removed from the building after authorities analyzed the crime scene.

VINDICATOR FILES

1994: Youngstown State University President Leslie Cochran hosts a meeting with presidents and chief academic officers of seven Mahoning and Shenango valley private colleges to discuss the possibility of student exchanges and joint academic programs.

East Palestine employees of the Kenmar Division plant of Ethan Allen Inc. of Danbury, Conn., which was closed in the summer of 1993, have abandoned efforts to reopen the plant under employee ownership.

A group of Austintown parents urge the Board of Education to abandon plans for a student health clinic, voicing fears that the clinic would distribute condoms or information on abortion. Superintendent Richard Denamen said the clinic was seen as a chance to improve health services, especially for students without health insurance.

1979: A 15-member group headed by Bazetta Township Trustee James Cook and Howland Trustee Orval Waldron will fight another attempt by Warren to annex the “Golden Triangle,” a tax-rich area just outside the city that includes Packard Electric, Van Huffel Tube Corp. and Warren Tool Corp.

Jodi Masters, 19-year-old bride of five months, dies in an early-morning fire at 32 Scioto Ave., Boardman, about 2 a.m. while her husband was doing laundry at a Canfield laundromat.

Hermitage commissioners block rezoning of 200 acres on Frampton Road from residential to one that would allow development of an airport by Buhl Clarke Jr.

1969: Fred Tod Jr. is elected president of the board of trustees of the Youngstown Hospital Association, succeeding Paul Wick. Mrs. Kenneth C. Schafer is re-elected president of the Woman’s Board.

Frank Leseganich is the apparent upset victor over veteran United Steelworkers of America District 26 Director James P. Griffin.

Opening at the Wedgewood Cinema, “Oliver;” at the Newport, “Star,” starring Julie Andrews; at the Uptown, “The Lion in Winter,” starring Peter O’Toole and Katharine Hepburn and at the Boardman Plaza Theater, “Funny Girl,” starring Barbra Steisand and Omar Sharif.

1944: One man is killed in a truck-auto collision, and two children die in sledding accidents. Dead are O.D. Johnston, 52, of Salem; Alvin Taylor, 12, of Poland Township, and Donna Mae Hill, 8, of New Castle, Pa.

Nearly every theater in Youngstown – downtown or neighborhood – will participate in a one-day war bond rally allowing any bond purchaser in free for matinee or evening performances.