YEARS AGO FOR FEB. 26

Today is Tuesday, Feb. 26, the 57th day of 2019. There are 308 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1616: Astronomer Galileo Galilei meets with a Roman Inquisition official, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, who orders 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.

1829: Levi Strauss, whose company manufactured the first blue jeans, is born in Buttenheim, Bavaria, Germany.

1904: The United States and Panama proclaim 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.

1987: The Tower Commission, which probed the Iran-Contra affair, issues a report rebuking President Ronald Reagan for failing to control his national security staff.

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.

2009:General Motors Corp. posts a $9.6 billion loss for the fourth quarter of 2008.

VINDICATOR FILES

1994: Trumbull County Common Pleas Judge David McLain denies a request by Rose Harrow to videotape the trial of the man charged with burglarizing her home. McLain says rules of the Ohio Supreme Court clearly allow taping and recording of court proceedings by the news media, not by private parties.

Some Youngstown area parishes are using girls as altar servers. Half of the 60 servers at St. Charles Church in Boardman are girls, and half of the 40 servers at Blessed Sacrament in Warren are girls.

The Warren City School District files suit seeking to keep Massillon from canceling basketball and football games in 1994 and 1995. Massillon announced that it would no longer play Warren Harding after an altercation between coaches and police after a Feb. 12 basketball game in Massillon.

1979: Youngstown Mayor J. Phillip Richley and City Engineer Carmen Conglose inspect deterioration of the 57-year-old Oak Street Bridge and say it will be months before it is repaired and reopened, or possibly longer until it is replaced.

Rob Theis of Boardman wins the all-events crown in the City Bowling Tournament. James Anderson wins the all-events handicap championship, Don Donovan is the singles champion, and John Sasinouski is the handicap singles champion.

1969: Boardman Local School District will hire 45 new teachers as part of a modification of the grade structure.

Warren Mayor Raymond Schryver, expressing concern over water and waste water treatment and garbage collection, invokes the Ferguson Act to end a strike by 226 striking city employees. The strikers have 10 days to return to work or be fired.

Charles Mangino, 31, is acquitted of second-degree murder in the death of ex-convict John W. Blair. The two had argued over money, and Mangino claimed self-defense.

1944: Formation of a Douglas MacArthur Club in Youngstown is announced by Walter Paulo, general superintendent of Isaly Dairy.

In a move to expedite Youngstown’s postwar airport expansion plans, Mayor Ralph O’Neill has appointed a city airport survey committee. Members are George Reiss, Vindicator aviation editor; James Ryan, engineering commissioner, and Joseph Smith, water commissioner.

Anthony Julius, Wilson Avenue, is arrested by Pennsylvania State Police at Portersville, Pa., with 30 cases of untaxed whiskey and five pairs of nylon hose in his car.