Years Ago

Today is Sunday, March 27, the 86th day of 2011. There are 279 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1794: Congress approves “An Act to provide a Naval Armament” of six armed ships.

1836: The first Mormon temple is dedicated in Kirtland, Ohio.

1911: Fort Lauderdale, Fla., is incorporated.

1945: During World War II, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower tells reporters in Paris that German defenses on the Western Front have been broken.

1961: Nine black students from Tougaloo College in Mississippi stage a “read-in” at the whites-only Jackson Municipal Library, and were arrested.

1964: Alaska is hit by a powerful earthquake and tsunamis that kills about 130 people.

VINDICATOR FILES

1986: The May Co. announces that it will close the Strouss-Kaufmann’s store in downtown Youngstown by July 1. The news comes days after J.C. Penney Co. announces it will close its Liberty Plaza store on Belmont Avenue.

Shenango Inc.’s ingot mould foundry and electric furnace operation have been purchased by the Boggs Corp., a Pittsburgh investment group.

Youngstown City Council approves hiring Sadie Hoagland as director of Federal Plaza, ending three months of controversy.

1971: Common Pleas Judge Forrest J. Cavalier grants a preliminary injunction blocking the Youngstown Board of Education from firing any of the district’s 14 school nurses, who were notified their employment would end June 30.

A New Springfield man, John Sedlak, 52, is killed when the sides of a 12-foot sewer ditch collapse in Roche Way, Boardman.

1961: Two New York financiers are elected to the board of directors of General Fireproofing Co. and Edward Purnell is named chairman of the board and Alfred J. Ball is elected president.

City Engineer J. Phillip Richley traces the sickening odor permeating the Youngstown’s River Bend area to the City Ash Co. dump northwest of the city in Trumbull County, where 44,000 pounds of meringue was dumped, then set on fire. Hundreds of rats were trapped by the fire and incinerated.

1936: Major Fred. L. Smith, state director of aeronautics, and R.D. McGill, county WPA administrator, urge Youngstown to act on securing a suitable airport site so that work can begin on developing one comparable to other Ohio cities.

The Republic Rubber Co. produces a 1,000-foot long, 60-inch wide conveyor belt that will be used at the Grand Coulee government project on the Columbia River in Washington State.

The Vindicator’s 48-page edition is the largest paper printed on a weekday since the boom days of 1929.

During a hearing in Youngstown Municipal court, Atty. Clyde Osborne accuses two Youngstown detectives of arresting only representatives of the “American Bank” in an effort to protect the city’s other numbers operation, the “Big House.”