Vindicator file photo / January 18, 1990 | Construction was underway 33 years ago for a new furnace at Copperweld Steel Co in Warren. Checking out its progress were Herbert Bollenbacher,  the company’s safety manager, and E. Terry Martin, chairman of the local union’s safety committee. 
 
January 14
 
1998: A North Lima woman found a bomb containing a half-pound block of TNT in her garage and took it to the Beaver Township police department, which turned it over to the Youngstown bomb squad. It was detonated at a strip mining site.  The woman said the bomb was given to her son as a gag gift at a fraternity party a year earlier. 
 
Liberty Local School District reaches a new contract with employees, including teachers, to end a seven-day strike. 
 
The Lou Holtz Hall of Fame is expected to open in late 1999 in a building being donated by Bank One in East Liverpool. Holtz, a 1954 East Liverpool High School graduate, gained fame as a football coach at Notre Dame.
 
1983: The Vukovich administration is recalling letters to 50 city employees informing them they were being laid off because the city did not comply with a state law that Youngstown officials didn't know about. Since April 1982, a city's Civil Service Commission must be notified before lay-off notices are sent out. 
 
Two men are found guilty in Warren Municipal Court of dumping brine, a toxic waste product of gas-well drilling, on the parking lot of the Inter-City Transport Co. on Summit Street. 
 
Because of an increase in car sales, projected lay-offs at the Packard Electric Division of General Motors are being scaled back. The number of workers on furlough will drop from 1,000   to 894.  
 
1973: FBI agents swoop down on illegal sports gambling operations in Trumbull County and Akron, Cleveland, Canton, Columbus, Cincinnati, and Las Vegas.  
 
More than 400 housing units for the elderly and 100 for low-income families under preliminary application by the Warren Metropolitan Housing Authority have run into a roadblock with the Nixon administration’s eight-month housing freeze. 
 
For the fifth straight year, state Sen. Harry Meshel is Mahoning County's Heart Sunday chairman. 
 
1948: "Don't be so quick to throw your money into the racketeer's coffers. He'll use it against you, advises Youngstown's new police chief, Edward Allen.