Today is Thursday, March 24, the 83rd day of 2005. There are 282 days left in the year. The Jewish

Today is Thursday, March 24, the 83rd day of 2005. There are 282 days left in the year. The Jewish holiday Purim begins at sunset. On this date in 1765, Britain enacts the Quartering Act, requiring American colonists to provide temporary housing to British soldiers.
In 1905, author Jules Verne dies in Amiens, France, at the age of 77. In 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt signs a bill granting future independence to the Philippines. In 1944, in occupied Rome, the Nazis execute more than 300 civilians in reprisal for an attack by Italian partisans the day before that killed 32 German soldiers. In 1955, the Tennessee Williams play "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" opens on Broadway with Barbara Bel Geddes as Maggie, Ben Gazzara as Brick and Burl Ives as Big Daddy. In 1976, the president of Argentina, Isabel Peron, is deposed by her country's military. In 1980, one of El Salvador's most respected Roman Catholic Church leaders, Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, is shot to death by gunmen as he celebrates Mass in San Salvador. In 1989, the nation's worst oil spill occurs as the Exxon Valdez runs aground on a reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound and begins leaking 11 million gallons of crude. In 1999, NATO launches airstrikes against Yugoslavia, marking the first time in its 50-year existence that it had ever attacked a sovereign country.
March 24, 1980: Hardened steelworkers cried and some took souvenirs as 20 steam whistles blew and the last shift left their jobs at U.S. Steel Corp.'s Ohio Works.
City detectives are attempting to learn the identity of two men who beat and robbed 78-year-old retired architect H. Walter Damon and his wife, Mary, of $50 and two leaded glass windows valued at $500 each after entering the couple's W. LaClede Avenue home.
A coin nobody wanted in 1907, a $20 Indian Head Double Eagle, the only one struck by the U.S. mint, is being sold by coin dealer Julian Leidman for $895,000. President Theodore Roosevelt didn't like the coin, so it never went into production.
March 24, 1965: Full-time Youngstown municipal employees are given raises of $30 a month. Mayor Anthony B. Flask says the raises, which will cost the city $492,444, were made possible by increased income tax collections.
Six Youngstown Diocesan priests will join 17 Youngstown area ministers and rabbis on a charter flight to Montgomery, Ala., to take part in the final day of the Selma freedom march.
March 24, 1955: More than 3,000 fans brave snowy and icy roads to fill the Westminster College Field House for the PIAA Class B western basketball final between undefeated Wampum and Mercer High schools. Wampum wins, 74-52.
A total of 767 Mahoning County citizens register at the board of elections to bring the total of those eligible to participate in the 1965 elections to 111,339.
District hunters are being asked to join in a hunt in the Hubbard area for an animal some persons believe is a black panther. Constable John Robinson says a dog owned by Michael Lubonovich of Liberty Road was killed under peculiar circumstances.
March 24, 1930: The Baptist community canvass of Youngstown, Girard, Hubbard and Warren raises donations and pledges of more than $100,000.
A new Mack pumper arrives at the Youngstown Fire Department and is put in service at Central Fire Station. The truck, which cost $13,000, will replace one destroyed in the Cities Service fire on Poland Avenue in the fall.
Four choir girls at St. James Methodist Episcopal Church in New York who have never been higher than the choir loft will make parachute jumps from a plane flying at $5,000 feet as part of an aerial show that will raise funds for the treatment of the mentally ill.