Years ago

March 10, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Today is Wednesday, March 10, the 69th day of 2010. There are 296 days left in the year.

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On this date in:

1496: Christopher Columbus concludes his second visit to the Western Hemisphere as he leaves Hispaniola for Spain.

1785: Thomas Jefferson is appointed America’s minister to France, succeeding Benjamin Franklin.

1876: The first successful voice transmission over Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone takes place in Boston as his assistant hears Bell say, “Mr. Watson — come here — I want to see you.”

1880: The Salvation Army arrives in the United States from England.

1910: Luggage maker Samsonite Corp., which had its beginnings as the Shwayder Trunk Manufacturing Co., is founded in Denver by Jesse Shwayder.

1969: James Earl Ray pleads guilty in Memphis, Tenn., to assassinating civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. (Ray later repudiates that plea, maintaining his innocence until his death.)

1980: “Scarsdale Diet” author Dr. Herman Tarnower is shot to death at his home in Purchase, N.Y. (Tarnower’s former lover, Jean Harris, is convicted of his murder; she serves nearly 12 years in prison before being released in January 1993.)

vindicator fileS

1985: The Youngstown Board of Education is preparing “reduction in force” notices that will be sent to 50 to 60 city school teachers, but it is anticipated that about 40 will have to be laid off because of declining enrollment.

The Lake Erie-to-Ohio River shipping canal project that has been resurrected by U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr., D-17th, is piquing the interest of U.S. Sens. John Glenn and Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio.

1970: Army Pfc. Francis L. Ware, a 1967 graduate of Chaney High School, is reported killed in hostile action near the Cambodian border.

Five youths are held at the Juvenile Research Center following a short rock and bottle throwing episode in which 150 to 200 youths gathered near Hillman Junior High.

1960: A trial opens in the courtroom of Common Pleas Judge Erskine Maiden Jr., over the sale of the book, “Sex Life of a Cop,” which Mahoning County Prosecutor Thomas A. Beil says is obscene under a new Ohio law. The courtroom is overflowing with spectators, mostly women opposed to the sale of obscene literature.

Burglars ransack the Mahoning National Bank’s North Jackson Branch, but fail to open one safe or to drag another out of the bank with a cable and winch on a stolen tow truck. They also broke into Dodd Chevrolet and a Pure Oil service station, but got only a small amount of change there.

1935: The YWCA enrollment drive, which has resulted in 300 new memberships and an equal number of renewals, is expanded for a week.

Gov. Davey says relief conditions in Youngstown were bad and an investigation of waste and inefficiency “would be a wholesome thing.”