Today is Saturday, March 15, the 75th day of 2008. There are 291 days left in the year. This is

Today is Saturday, March 15, the 75th day of 2008. There are 291 days left in the year. This is “Buzzard Day” — the day the buzzards return to Hinckley, Ohio. On this date in 44 B.C., Roman dictator Julius Caesar is assassinated by a group of nobles that includes Brutus and Cassius.

In 1493, Christopher Columbus returns to Spain, concluding his first voyage to the Western Hemisphere. In 1767, Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, is born in Waxhaw, S.C.

In 1820, Maine becomes the 23rd state. In 1913, President Wilson meets with reporters for what’s been described as the first presidential press conference (although some sources say Wilson’s first actual press conference was a week later). In 1919, the American Legion is founded, in Paris. In 1944, during World War II, Allied bombers again raid German-held Monte Cassino. In 1956, the Lerner and Loewe musical play “My Fair Lady” opens on Broadway. In 1964, actress Elizabeth Taylor marries actor Richard Burton in Montreal; it is her fifth marriage, his second. In 1970, Expo ’70, promoting “Progress and Harmony for Mankind,” opens in Osaka, Japan. In 1975, Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis dies near Paris at age 69.

March 15, 1983: An estimated 200 people attend a Sharon City School Board meeting to protest the possibility that an upcoming building facilitation study will result in the closing of some neighborhood elementary schools.

In response to a letter from Liberty Township trustees, the Trumbull County commissioners agree to support efforts by local communities to buy Liberty Lakes for a water supply. Ohio Water Service, which owns the lakes, is said to be willing to sell them for $5 million.

City employees will be laid off as early as May 1 to alleviate serious financial problems facing the city, Girard Mayor Joseph Melfi says.

March 15, 1968: The price of gold spurts $9 to $43 per ounce on the Paris market, sending stock prices down and interest rates up.

John J. Gilligan of Cincinnati, Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, calls for an increase in federal aid for education while speaking at a meeting of the Ohio Federation of Teachers at Hotel Ohio in Youngstown.

Tran van Dinh, former acting ambassador of Vietnam to the United States, tells the Youngstown Junior League Town Hall audience at the State Theater that if the United States sent a million troops to Vietnam it would only control the military aspect; it would not solve the nation’s political issues.

March 15, 1958: The Lake-to-Ohio-River Highway Association is gearing up to promote a four-lane highway that would run through Ashtabula, Trumbull, Mahoning and Columbiana counties.

A 15-year-old Moundsville, W.Va., high school freshman is arrested at school after his mother’s body is found underneath a bed at their trailer home. The boy readily admitted to killing his mother with a hatchet nearly a week earlier.

Bell Telephone investigators nab a Warren man and a Sharon man after setting a trap to catch bandits who had been prying open roadside pay phones in Ohio and Pennsylvania. The men got an estimated $1,000 in coins and caused $5,000 in damage.

March 15, 1933: The Mahoning River is running 8.6 feet above normal, with 7.5 billion gallons of water a day flowing through Youngstown. A normal flow is 230 million gallons a day.

Twenty-eight state and federal banks in Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties receive their licenses and are reopened.

The Rev. Frederick L. Odenbach, 76, a scientist connected with John Carroll University for 40 years who invented nationally known devices for measuring earth tremors and air waves, dies in St. Johns Hospital, Cleveland.