YEARS AGO

March 13, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Today is Saturday, March 13, the 72nd day of 2010. There are 293 days left in the year. A reminder: Daylight-Saving Time begins Sunday at 2 a.m. local time. Clocks go forward one hour.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1781: The seventh planet of the solar system, Uranus, is discovered by Sir William Herschel.

1901: The 23rd president of the United States, Benjamin Harrison, dies in Indianapolis at age 67.

1925: The Tennessee General Assembly approves a bill prohibiting the teaching of the theory of evolution. (Gov. Austin Peay signs the measure on March 21.)

1928: Hundreds of people die when the San Francisquito Valley in California is inundated with water after the St. Francis Dam bursts.

1933: Banks begin to re-open after a a “holiday” declared by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

1964: Bar manager Catherine “Kitty” Genovese, 28, is stabbed to death near her Queens, N.Y., home; the case generates controversy over the supposed failure of Genovese’s neighbors to respond to her cries for help.

1969: The Apollo 9 astronauts splash down, ending a mission that included the successful testing of the Lunar Module.

1980: Ford Motor Chairman Henry Ford II announces he is stepping down, the same day a jury in Winamac, Ind., finds Ford Motor Co. innocent of reckless homicide in the fiery deaths of three young women in a Ford Pinto.

1988: Yielding to student protests, the board of trustees of Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., a liberal arts college for the hearing-impaired, chooses I. King Jordan to become the school’s first deaf president.

1996: A gunman bursts into an elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland, and opens fire, killing 16 children and one teacher before killing himself.

VINDICATOR FILES

1985: North Star Steel Co. gives Youngstown until April 1 to decide whether the company’s proposed $100 million investment will receive a 10-year break on taxes.

David Webster, president of Columbia Theater Inc., is optimistic that the old theater in W. State Street in Sharon can be saved and renovated with a $200,000 state grant.

The Mahoning County Litter Control program introduces its mascot, Cubby the Cleanup Bear, who will attend various civic functions to make the public aware of its anti-litter program.

1970: Books and records of Teamsters Local 377 in Youngstown are subpoenaed by a special federal grand jury in Cleveland.

Two 14-year-old Hillman Junior High School girls are committed to the Ohio Youth Commission in Columbus after being found guilty of delinquency for setting a fire in a wastebasket at the school. The floor and a desk were damaged.

Youngstown Police Chief Donald Baker is in Cleveland discussing a step up against organized crime in the area with Asst. U.S. Atty. Gen. Will R. Wilson.

1960: Police Chief Peter Venorsky orders his men to pick up all racketeers, hoodlums and known associates of S. Joseph “Sandy” Naples, who was gunned down on the porch of his girlfriend’s home.

Canfield Township trustees are moving to rezone land on which the Mahoning County Home is located, which would clear the way for sale of the 290 acre site.

Walter Paulo, executive vice president of the Isaly Dairy Co., says the Youngstown-based company will open its 359th store in the Lakemore Shopping Center in Akron.

1935: Youngstown Mayor Mark E. Moore says citizens who want greater control of beer and liquor gardens in their communities should avail themselves of the local option process. The Youngstown Ministerial Association says that will be its next step, but in the meantime police should enforce liquor laws aggressively.

Four medical authorities from the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn., will lecture at the eighth annual Post-Graduate Day of the Mahoning County Medical Society at Stambaugh Auditorium.