Today is Monday, March 27, the 86th day of 2006. There are 279 days left in the year. On this date

Today is Monday, March 27, the 86th day of 2006. There are 279 days left in the year. On this date in 1977, 582 people are killed when a KLM Boeing 747, attempting to take off, crashes into a Pan Am 747 on the Canary Island of Tenerife.
In 1513, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon sights Florida. In 1625, Charles I ascends the English throne upon the death of James I. In 1794, President Washington and Congress authorize creation of the U.S. Navy. In 1836, the first Mormon temple is dedicated, in Kirtland, Ohio. In 1917, the Seattle Metropolitans become the first U.S. team to win the Stanley Cup as they defeat the Montreal Canadiens.
In 1958, Nikita Khrushchev becomes Soviet premier in addition to First Secretary of the Communist Party. In 1964, Alaska is rocked by a powerful earthquake that kills 114 people. In 1980, 137 workers die when a North Sea floating oil field platform, the Alexander I. Keilland, capsizes during a storm. In 1998, the Food and Drug Administration approves the anti-impotence drug Viagra, made by Pfizer. In 1996, an Israeli court convicts Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's confessed assassin of murder, then sentences former law student Yigal Amir to life in prison.
In 2001, in its first specific accusation against a detained U.S.-based scholar, China says Gao Zhan had confessed to spying for foreign intelligence agencies. (Gao, who had been detained Feb. 11, was released the following July.) In 2005, Pope John Paul II delivers an Easter Sunday blessing in St. Peter's Square, but the ailing pontiff was unable to speak and managed only to greet the saddened crowd with a sign of the cross.
March 27, 1981: Bus service to some areas outside Youngstown, including Girard and Niles, may be reduced or eliminated so the financially troubled Western Reserve Transit Authority can keep its head above water.
State approval of a $4 million loan guarantee for the Commuter Aircraft Corp. clears the way for the company to secure $10 million in local loans for a proposed aircraft assembly plant at Youngstown Municipal Airport.
Advertisement: On display at Miller's 808 Wick Ave., is the 'Lectric Leopard" by U.S. Electricar, which costs about a penny a mile for the electricity needed to operate it and goes up to 50 mph.
March 27, 1966: A large army of Western Pennsylvanians who commute to jobs in Youngstown district steel mills have a major stake in the area's economic future and should be militantly supporting the Lake Erie-Ohio River Waterway, says James Griffin , director of the United Steelworkers District 26.
Two Vindicator newspaper boys, Mark S. Curtis , 14, of Youngstown and Donald Mickel, 14, of Warren, win a 12-day trip to the British Isles in a contest sponsored by The Vindicator and its Sunday supplement, Parade magazine.
The Youngstown Social Security Office at 35 Central Square will be open four evenings to give senior citizens eligible for Medicare medical insurance an opportunity to sign up before the March 31 deadline. Those who miss the deadline will have to wait two years to be eligible for coverage.
March 27, 1956: Seventy Pennsylvania companies announce they will file suit challenging the "lock-out" ruling that the State Department of Labor and Industry issued in the four-month Westinghouse Electric strike.
Twenty-five Negro ministers in Youngstown representing 7,000 church members to pray during simultaneous services that "good will and justice be done to all people."
Advertisement: On display for one week at Barrett Cadillac, 907 Wick Ave., the Cadillac Eldorado Brougham, a dramatic departure from any previous Cadillac model, which will go into limited production during the 1956 model year.
March 27, 1931: The Ohio Supreme Court, acting on a request by Mahoning County Prosecuting Attorney Ray L. Thomas, orders a halt to a special grand jury called by Mahoning County common pleas judges to investigate possible improper payments made by utility companies to Thomas. A hearing on the issue will be held April 7.
Youngstown bowler Mike Mauser rolls a scintillating 1966, which included a high game of 289, during the American Bowling Congress in Buffalo, N.Y.
The McKeefrey Iron Co.'s old blast furnace at Leetonia, which was built in 1866, is razed, leaving only a tangled mass of scrap metal, broken bricks and old lumber.