21 WFMJ archives / February 2, 1998 | "Mr. Wizard" visited St. Patrick School in Hubbard 26 years ago. Brendan Shinosky, a sixth grader, assisted Heather Dailide in demonstrating the properties of water as it traveled down a string. 

February 3

2000: Mark Shutes, president of the 384-member Youngstown State University Chapter of the Ohio Education Association, says a panel of faculty and administrators should be appointed to investigate a charge of plagiarism against a dean at YSU. The union says the issue should not be shifted to an incoming university president. 

An employee at a massage parlor on Mahoning Avenue in Austintown is arrested on charges of offering a sex act for money. 

Youngstown City Council approved $47,000 for the salaries of two part-time employees and the purchase of video cameras with night scopes to combat illegal trash dumping in the city. 

1985: Kicking off Black History Month at Youngstown State University, Dorothy L. Burch, president of the Ohio Chapter of the NAACP, says that although racism is "alive and well and gaining weight" in the United States, young black people have inherited the strength to reverse that trend. 

A dinner will be held at Mr. Anthony's to honor the Rev. Arthur Swinehart and his wife, Helen, as Rev. Swinehart retires from his 40-year ministry at Austintown Community Church. 

Anticipating a replay of the divisive 1983 Democratic Party battle for the Youngstown mayoral nomination, Republicans have called Ronald P. Schroeder, a former 7th Ward councilman, out of retirement to mount a GOP resurgence. 

1975: Edward DeBartolo Sr. takes complete control of Louisiana Downs, the modernistic track near Shreveport, La., where DeBartolo had been a partner.

President Gerald Ford painted his bleakest picture of the nation's economy, asking Congress to approve a record peacetime budget of $52 billion to help end the worsening recession. 

Ninety-three automobile dealers in Mahoning, Trumbull, and Ashtabula counties have launched an intensive campaign to stimulate the market. The motto is "Let's keep America rolling. It's a good day to buy a new car."

1950: Three men enter the Hayes Avenue home of jewelry salesman Phillip Kalver, hold him, his mother, and his brother at gunpoint, and escape with sample cases of 1,600 rings valued at $75,000.

Billy Stroud, 6, is in fair condition in South Side Hospital after a car plows into a group of St. Patrick School students crossing Market Street.