Today is Monday, March 31, the 91st day of 2008. There are 275 days left in the year. On this date

Today is Monday, March 31, the 91st day of 2008. There are 275 days left in the year. On this date in 1968, at the conclusion of a nationally broadcast address on efforts to bring a peaceful end to the Vietnam War, President Lyndon B. Johnson shocks listeners by announcing he would not seek another term of office.

In 1880, Wabash, Ind., becomes the first town in the world to be illuminated by electrical lighting. In 1889, French engineer Gustave Eiffel unfurls the French tricolor from atop the Eiffel Tower, officially marking its completion. In 1917, the United States takes possession of the Virgin Islands from Denmark. In 1933, Congress approves, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs, the Emergency Conservation Work Act, which creates the Civilian Conservation Corps. In 1943, the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “Oklahoma!” opens on Broadway. In 1945, the Tennessee Williams play “The Glass Menagerie” opens on Broadway. In 1976, the New Jersey Supreme Court rules that Karen Ann Quinlan, who is in a persistent vegetative state, could be disconnected from her respirator. (Quinlan, who remains unconscious, dies in 1985.) In 2005, Terri Schiavo, 41, dies at a hospice in Pinellas Park, Fla., 13 days after her feeding tube is removed in a wrenching right-to-die dispute.

March 31, 1983: Steelworkers at Taylor-Winfield Corp. agree to take a cut in wages and insurance benefits in order to save jobs and help the firm be more competitive.

Union Savings and Trust Co., Trumbull County’s largest bank, agrees in principle to merge with Bank One of Eastern Ohio.

Applications will be taken for 150 jobs at the Bessemer Cement Co., which has been purchased by the Standard Machine Equipment Co. of Uniontown. The plant will reopen in about six weeks.

March 31, 1968: Pennsylvania state police say that evidence suggests that the band of four men who abducted two college couples at Slippery Rock, killed one man and raped the two coeds, intended to kill the second man as well.

Youngstown’s new $6.6 million post office will be in the hands of architects within a month and will be completed within three years, says U.S. Rep. Michael J. Kirwan.

The Rev. Cyril J. Kramar, 68, formerly of Youngstown, a Maryknoll missionary interned by the Japanese during World War II, dies in Phelps Memorial Hospital, N. Tarrytown, N.Y.

March 31, 1958: Bishop Hazen G. Werner, leader of Methodism in Ohio, opens Community Holy Week in Youngstown during a noon service at Trinity Methodist Church.

Mrs. Julia Nemeth, 72, of Fox-North Road, Hubbard, dies of severe burns after her clothing catches fire while she is fighting a grass fire on her farm.

The 129-year-old Veach Methodist Church, a familiar landmark off Route 304, two miles east of Hubbard, will be razed, a victim of age and vandalism.

March 31, 1933:A posse of 150 armed farmers and lawmen capture five Alliance gunmen in the woods south of Lisbon after the robbers struck a gas station in Carrollton.

The Ohio Works of Carnegie Steel Co. will resume after two weeks of idleness with one blast furnace, the Bessemer and five open hearths. Hundreds of men will be recalled for at least a week.

State Sen. George Roberts of Youngstown, a dry senator, denies reports circulating in Columbus that he lost $420 while in the company of a young woman in Tom Tight’s “polite beer parlor,” a place known to cater to legislators.