YEARS AGO FOR JAN. 13

Today is Sunday, Jan. 13, the 13th day of 2019. There are 352 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1794: President George Washington approves a measure adding two stars and two stripes to the American flag, after the admission of Vermont and Kentucky to the Union. (The number of stripes was later reduced to the original 13.)

1915: A magnitude-7 earthquake centered in Avezzano, Italy, claims about 30,000 lives.

1941: A new law goes into effect granting Puerto Ricans U.S. birthright citizenship.

Novelist and poet James Joyce dies in Zurich, Switzerland, less than a month before his 59th birthday.

1962:Comedian Ernie Kovacs dies in a car crash in west Los Angeles 10 days before his 43rd birthday.

1964: Roman Catholic Bishop Karol Wojtyla (the future Pope John Paul II) is appointed Archbishop of Krakow, Poland, by Pope Paul VI.

1968: Country singer Johnny Cash performs and records a pair of shows at Folsom State Prison in California; material from the concerts is released as an album by Columbia Records under the title “Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison,” and it becomes a hit.

1978: Former Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey dies in Waverly, Minn., at age 66.

1982: An Air Florida 737 crashes into Washington, D.C.’s 14th Street Bridge and falls into the Potomac River while trying to take off during a snowstorm, killing 78 people; a subway train derailment in downtown Washington one-half hour later kills three people.

1990: L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia becomes the nation’s first elected black governor as he takes the oath of office in Richmond.

1992: Japan apologizes for forcing tens of thousands of Korean women to serve as sex slaves for its soldiers during World War II, citing newly uncovered documents that show the Japanese army had played a role in abducting the so-called “comfort women.”

1997: Seven black soldiers are awarded the Medal of Honor for World War II valor; the lone survivor of the group, former Lt. Vernon Baker, receives his medal from President Bill Clinton at the White House.

2000: Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates steps aside as chief executive and promotes company President Steve Ballmer to the position.

2012: The Italian luxury liner Costa Concordia runs aground off the Tuscan island of Giglio and flips onto its side; 32 people are killed.

VINDICATOR FILES

1994: Tyrone Ellington, 37, of Youngstown settles his $10 million false arrest and imprisonment suit against Struthers for $60,000 to be paid over five years. Ellington’s lawyer, Paul Gains, will be paid $20,000 by the city.

Warren Auditor Anthony Iannucci says the city lost $26,000 in interest when Treasurer Patricia Leon-Games closed an investment account and put $700,000 in a money market fund.

Youngstown City Council unanimously repeals an ordinance granting R.T. Vernal Paving Co. a tax break on land on the city’s West Side.

1979: Austintown Fraternal Order of Police members set up picket lines at the police station on Mahoning Avenue, saying they won’t return to work without a new contract. Trustees say they won’t negotiate until officers are back on the job. Only 3 of 30 employees reported for work.

The Rev. Robert Offerle, pastor of St. Rocco’s Episcopal Church in Liberty, who served at a seminary in Namibia in the early 1960s, fears violence is coming to the country, which is known as South West Africa by its European settlers.

Julius Bodnar is appointed to a five-year term on the Parks and Recreation Commission by the Youngstown Board of Education. His wife, Annabelle, a member of the board, abstained from voting.

1969: Mrs. Levold Thomas, 32, of Youngstown dies at St. Elizabeth Hospital a day after being shot five times at her home.

Walter Chmara is installed as president of the Free Polish Krakusy Society Lodge 827. Other officers are Adam Baran, vice president; Thaddeus Wojtaszek, treasurer, and Henry Skarbeck, recording secretary.

Dr. Thomas Showalter, superintendent of Girard schools, is named director for the Northeast Ohio Red Cross Youth Leadership Development Center, an annual event held in Painesville.

1944: Col. L.R. Boals, executive director of the Youngstown Office of Civilian Defense, says there will be no more blackouts or air-raid alerts in keeping with new national policy designed to reduce interference with war production.

The proposed Lake Erie-Ohio River waterway and the proposed Shenango Reservoir face little prospect of getting construction begun in the next fiscal year unless President Franklin D. Roosevelt changes spending priorities.

A record donation of 230 pints of blood, the most the Cleveland mobile blood unit ever handled in Youngstown in one day, is collected at the Red Cross blood bank at First Presbyterian Church.