Years Ago

Today is Sunday, April 3, the 93rd day of 2011. There are 272 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1860: The legendary Pony Express begins carrying mail between St. Joseph, Mo., and Sacramento, Calif. (The delivery system lasts only 18 months before giving way to the transcontinental telegraph.)

1882: Outlaw Jesse James is shot to death in St. Joseph, Mo., by Robert Ford, a member of James’ gang.

1911: Jean Sibelius’ Symphony No. 4 in A minor, Op. 63, has its world premiere in Helsinki, Finland, with Sibelius conducting.

1936: Bruno Hauptmann is electrocuted in Trenton, N.J., for the kidnap-murder of Charles Lindbergh Jr.

1946: Lt. Gen. Masaharu Homma, the Japanese commander responsible for the Bataan Death March, is executed by firing squad outside Manila.

1948: President Harry S. Truman signs into law the Marshall Plan, designed to help European allies rebuild after World War II and resist Communism.

1968: The day before he is assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his famous “mountaintop” speech to a rally of striking sanitation workers.

VINDICATOR FILES

1986: Trumbull County’s jobless rate drops in February from 12.3 percent to 11.7 percent. Mahoning County remains steady at 11 percent.

Cynthia Lynn Purdy, a Meadville, Pa., native, tells her parents she was just five rows away when a terrorist detonated a bomb during a TWA flight over Greece. Four Americans were killed, but Purdy, a stewardess for less than a month, escaped injury.

U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. says an ethanol distillery at the former Firebrick property in Niles could become a major research center for “desulfurizing” Ohio coal and exploring uses for eastern oil shale.

1971: Youngstown Fire Fighters Local 312 is seeking mediation or arbitration of its contract dispute with the city’s negotiating team.

Pennsylvania police arrest two young men, one the manager of a boutique shop in Slippery Rock and the other manager of a shop in Butler, on charges of blasphemy for displaying “wanted” posters of Jesus Christ in their windows.

State Sen. Harry Meshel of Youngstown introduces legislation calling for creation of medical schools at Youngstown State University and at Athens, Dayton and Akron.

Youngstown State University is serving 80 percent of the students of Mahoning County who are enrolled in Ohio public colleges or universities, according to a report by the Ohio Board of Regents.

1961: Some 2,500 protestants brave a snowy cold Easter dawn to attend sunrise Easter services in downtown Youngstown’s Warner Theater and the First Baptist Church.

Five Youngstown area residents get hospital treatment for broken bones suffered in falls on an Easter Sunday on which icy rain and freezing temperatures produced slick sidewalks and steps.

1936: After four days of hearings, Brig. Gen. George B. Pillsbury says a decision on construction of a Lake Erie-Ohio River canal is up to the Board of Army Engineers since Congress has already authorized the project.

Steel output in the Youngstown District is poised to set another output record, reaching 75 percent, the highest in six years.

Atty. H.H. Wickham, chairman of the Silver Jubilee Crusade at St. Patrick Church, reports that $16,000 has been raised toward a goal of $75,000 before April 14.