Today is Sunday, March 30, the 90th day of 2008. There are 276 days left in the year. On this date

Today is Sunday, March 30, the 90th day of 2008. There are 276 days left in the year. On this date in 1981, President Reagan is shot and seriously injured outside a Washington hotel by John Hinckley Jr. Also wounded are White House press secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy and District of Columbia police officer Thomas Delahanty.

In 1842, Dr. Crawford W. Long, of Jefferson, Ga., first uses ether as an anesthetic during a minor operation. In 1867, Secretary of State William H. Seward reaches agreement with Russia to purchase the territory of Alaska for $7.2 million, a deal roundly ridiculed as “Seward’s Folly.” In 1870, the 15th amendment to the Constitution, giving all citizens the right to vote regardless of race, is declared in effect by Secretary of State Hamilton Fish. In 1870, Texas is readmitted to the Union. In 1945, the Soviet Union invades Austria during World War II. In 1964, John Glenn withdraws from the Ohio race for the U.S. Senate because of injuries suffered in a fall.. In 2002, Britain’s Queen Mother Elizabeth dies in her sleep at Royal Lodge, Windsor, outside London; she was 101 years old.

March 30, 1983: Youngstown Commerce Park, the budding industrial site born out of an effort to refurbish the Mahoning Valley’s tattered economy, will begin taking shape as early as May.

Youngstown is pinning its hopes for a balanced budget on federal money it may receive under the multi-billion-dollar jobs bill passed by Congress.

The former Higbee Co. building or the soon-to-be-vacated Haber Furniture building could be home for a federal office building proposed for downtown Youngstown, says Mayor George Vukovich.

March 30, 1968: Pennsylvania state police in Mercer charge a 19-year-old Jackson Center man in the slaying of a 21-year-old Ford City student, one of four students kidnapped from outside a closed restaurant near the Slippery Rock State College campus. Dead is Kenneth Frick, a student at Virginia Military Institute; another male student and two coeds escaped. Three accomplices in the kidnapping and murder are being sought.

Three teen-age youths are wounded, one critically, in two shooting incidents that erupted following a disturbance between East Side and South Side groups in N. Walnut Street.

March 30, 1958: The Ninth District Court of Appeals rules that three Amish couples near Wooster were imprisoned unlawfully by a Norwalk probate court judge for not sending their sons to school.

Four Youngstowners, including Carl J. Honen, vice president in charge of sales promotion for McKay Machine Co. are injured when their private plane en route from Youngstown to Daytona Beach, Fla., makes a forced landing on a beach near St. Augustine, Fla.

March 30, 1933: The Ohio General Assembly approves the return of legal beer in the state by April 7, but legalization in Youngstown may be months away. Revoking the city’s prohibition law immediately would take six of seven votes by City Council, and two councilmen are balking.

Passage of an Ohio House bill approving betting on horse racing will mean the return of racing at Southern Park in Boardman and an investment of $100,000 at the track.

The U.S. House of Representatives passes a resolution to make the Beaver and Mahoning rivers canal project part of President Roosevelt’s unemployment relief program.