Today is Monday, Jan. 20, the 20th day of 2014. There are 345 days left in the year. This is the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
On this date in:
1265: England’s first representative Parliament meets for the first time.
1649: King Charles I of England goes on trial, accused of high treason (he was found guilty and executed by month’s end).
1887: The U.S. Senate approves an agreement to lease Pearl Harbor in Hawaii as a naval base.
1936: King George V of Britain dies; he is succeeded by Edward VIII.
1942: Nazi officials hold the notorious Wannsee conference, during which they arrive at their “final solution” that calls for exterminating Jews.
1954: National Negro Network, America’s first black-owned radio network, begins broadcasting over 20 stations (however, it folds the following year).
1961: John F. Kennedy is inaugurated as the 35th president of the United States.
1964: Capitol Records releases the album “Meet the Beatles!”
1981: Iran releases 52 Americans it had held hostage for 444 days, minutes after the U.S. presidency had passed from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan.
1986: The United States observes the first federal holiday in honor of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
1989: George H.W. Bush is sworn in as the 41st president of the United States; Dan Quayle is sworn in as vice president.
1994: Shannon Faulkner becomes the first woman to attend classes at The Citadel in South Carolina.
2001: George Walker Bush becomes America’s 43rd president after one of the most turbulent elections in U.S. history.
2004: President George W. Bush, in his State of the Union address, asserts that America is strengthening its economy and successfully combatting terrorism.
2009: Barack Obama is sworn in as the nation’s 44th, as well as first African-American, president.
1989: David Tod and Daniel B. Roth, principals of Torent Inc., earn the Mahoning Valley Management Association’s first joint “Managers of the Year” award.
House Speaker Vernal G. Riffe Jr. says that state Rep. Ronald V. Gerberry, D-71st, knew for a year that he was going to lose his chairmanship of the House Education Committee after the Austintown legislator broke ranks with Riffe and voted against a tort reform bill.
Youngstown Mayor Patrick J. Ungaro vetoes legislation raising the pay of Park Department workers at an annual cost of $10,790 because, he says, it would place the park workers’ salaries above other city employees in comparable positions.
1974: A minority report issued by members of the Governor’s Task Force on Health Care strongly contradicts a report issued in December that called for tabling development of a medical school consortium of Youngstown, Kent and Akron state universities.
Niles Mayor William A. Thorp says the 57-year-old Niles McKinley Memorial, focal point of the downtown area, may be a direct financial beneficiary of the nation’s bicentennial celebration in 1976.
Trumbull County director of elections Ina B. Cooper announces that she will be retiring after a half-century association with the Trumbull County Board of Elections.
1964: A 22-year-old South Side man, Charles Teague, is crushed to death when his car slips off two jacks as he worked on its differential at his Myrtle Avenue home.
Democratic county chair- men in Ohio vote to stand by their earlier endorsement of U.S. Sen. Stephen Young over his newly announced challenger, former astronaut John Glenn.
A Poland stewardess, Carol Bookout, 22, is one of seven people injured when an American Airlines jet runs into severe turbulence over the New Mexico-Colorado border.
1939: Sheriff Ralph E. Elser and his deputies conduct gambling raids at the Blue Bird Inn and Poland Country Club, confiscating gambling paraphernalia and arresting two men.
John Tod is re-elected president of the Youngstown Hospital Association during the 56th annual meeting. Byron W. Stewart, superintendent, says the general decline in business in 1938 was reflected in hospital receipts, with only births showing an increase.
Joseph P. Callan, 36, a city fireman and brother of former fire Chief Harry Callan, is fatally injured when an automobile in which he was riding smashed into a truck on the Youngstown- Akron Road during a blinding snowstorm.