Today is Saturday, March 1, the 61st day of 2008. There are 305 days left in the year. On this date

Today is Saturday, March 1, the 61st day of 2008. There are 305 days left in the year. On this date in 1932, Charles A. Lindbergh Jr., the 20-month-old son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh, is kidnapped from the family home near Hopewell, N.J. (Remains identified as those of the child are found the following May.)

In 1781, the Continental Congress declares the Articles of Confederation to be in force, following ratification by Maryland. In 1790, President Washington signs a measure authorizing the first U.S. Census. In 1864, Rebecca Lee Crumpler becomes the first black woman to receive an American medical degree, from the New England Female Medical College in Boston. In 1867, Nebraska becomes the 37th state. In 1872, President Grant signs a measure creating Yellowstone National Park. In 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, back from the Yalta Conference, proclaims the meeting a success as he addresses a joint session of Congress. In 1954, Puerto Rican nationalists open fire from the gallery of the U.S. House of Representatives, wounding five congressmen. In 1961, President Kennedy establishes the Peace Corps. In 1967, U.S. Representative Adam Clayton Powell of New York, accused of misconduct, is denied his seat in the 90th Congress. (The Supreme Court ruled in 1969 that Powell had to be seated.) In 1981, Irish Republican Army member Bobby Sands begins a hunger strike at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland; he dies 65 days later.

March 1, 1983: Local presidents of the United Steelworkers of America ratify a labor contract that immediately cut wages for 266,000 workers by $1.25 per hour.

Mahoning County Juvenile Court Judge Martin P. Joyce warns county commissioners that he will ask the appellate court to order them to give him more money if they don’t do so voluntarily. Commissioners have appropriated $1,095,25 for the court; Joyce says he needs $1,256,588.

Some 1,600 workers at the General Motors Lordstown Assembly Division van plant will be off the job for at least three days as debris is cleared from a fire in the paint shop.

March 1, 1968: Forty-nine Youngstown area public and parochial schools are flying the Green Pennant symbolizing safety and denoting that the school has had no student-caused accidents. The pennants are distributed by the Safety Council of Youngstown in cooperation the General Motors plant at Lordstown.

A 19-year-old mother and her two daughters die in a fire that sweeps their home in Saybrook, six miles west of Ashtabula. Dead are Debra Ann Brown and her children, Michelle, 14 months, and Penny, two months.

Atty. Nathaniel Jones, a former assistant U.S. District attorney in Cleveland, says Youngstown has all the ingredients that were present in other major cities where racial disturbances broke out in the summer of 1967, poverty and a lack of job and educational opportunities.

March 1, 1958: In a letter to the Mahoning County Medical Society, Youngstown Health Commissioner D. Roy Mellon calls for a third Salk vaccine program in city public and parochial schools.

A half dozen Pittsburgh numbers racketeers reportedly have fled to the Youngstown area following the arrest of 17 alleged bug barons on charges they bribed or attempted to bribe Pittsburgh’s racket squad members.

Youngstown receives federal approval of the center line for the first leg of the arterial highway system from Belle Vista Ave. to Poland Ave., but the action has failed to break the log jam blocking the project’s construction.

March 1, 1933: A Democratic gerrymandering bill that would remove Ashtabula from the 19th Congressional District, leaving only Mahoning and Trumbull counties in the district, is sent to the Ohio House for approval.

Youngstown schools must slash their 1934 budget $176,000 and the city must cut $155,200 to make up for a reduction of 10 percent in building values on the Mahoning County tax duplicate.

Fire of undetermined origin destroys a large barn filled with feed and hay on the Jon L. Ward farm, two miles south of Columbiana. A number of cattle were saved, but two calves were lost. Damage is estimated at $7,000.