Years Ago

Today is Monday, March 7, the 66th day of 2011. There are 299 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1911: President William Howard Taft orders 20,000 troops to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border in response to the Mexican Revolution.

1850: In a three-hour speech to the U.S. Senate, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts endorses the Compromise of 1850 as a means of preserving the Union.

1876: Alexander Graham Bell receives a patent for his telephone.

1926: The first successful trans-Atlantic radio-telephone conversations take place between New York and London.

1936: Adolf Hitler orders his troops to march into the Rhineland, thereby breaking the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact.

1945: During World War II, U.S. forces cross the Rhine River at Remagen, Germany, using the damaged but still usable Ludendorff Bridge.

1975: The U.S. Senate revises its filibuster rule, allowing 60 senators to limit debate in most cases, instead of the previously required two-thirds of senators present.

1981: Anti-government guerrillas in Colombia execute kidnapped American Bible translator Chester Bitterman, whom they’d accused of being a CIA agent.

VINDICATOR FILES

1986: The Youngstown Board of Education violated state law by transferring authority over the business manager from the superintendent to the board of eduction, city Law Director Edwin Romero rules.

Steven Yovich Sr. of Howland, former chief sanitarian for the Trumbull County Board of Health, is appointed to the board.

As a promotion for its newest store, the Sami Quick Stop stores in the Youngstown area are selling regular gasoline for 69.9 cents a gallon, premium for 72.9.

1971: Youngstown Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 28 and the city’s negotiating team arrive at a three-year agreement that will give police officers a salary of $9.600 after two years.

Spec. 4 Paul Sgambati, 20, of 130 Morris Ave., Girard is killed while serving as a door gunner on a helicopter over Laos.

Kathy Cooney, a freshman home economics major at Youngstown State University, is crowed queen of the 21st annual Military Ball at the Voyager Motor Inn.

1961: Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Krossman and their daughter, Joeann, are killed are killed when their car strikes a utility pole in Girard while being pursued by a Youngstown police cruiser for a traffic violation.

Youngstown superintendent of schools J. Harry Wanamaker tells the board of education that the 1961 budget will be $12.8 million, a cut of $300,000 from the tentative budget.

Sheriff Ray T. Davis drops plans for a lottery to finance uniforms for deputies after a Vindicator story reports that the Ohio constitution bans lotteries. Prosecutor Thomas A. Beil says he was planning to challenge Davis’ plan even before the story ran.

1936: Two Niles men, William Keely, 24, and Clyde J. Nolder, 36, are killed when their small car is truck by a passenger train and thrown into the path of a freight train at the Burton Street crossing in Warren.

The addition of two Republic Steel Corp. open hearth furnaces lifts steel output in the Youngstown district beyond 67 percent.

Municipal Judge Peter B. Mulholland sends three more drivers to jail for five days for speeding or reckless driving. One man was charged with driving 65 mph in Glenwood Avenue.

City engineers and the South Side Merchants Association propose the widening of Market Street to four lanes between Pasadena and Indianola avenues.