Years Ago

Today is Saturday, March 17, the 77th day of 2012. There are 289 days left in the year. This is St. Patrick’s Day.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

A.D. 461: St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, dies in Saul.

1762: New York’s first St. Patrick’s Day parade takes place.

1776: British forces evacuate Boston during the Revolutionary War.

1906: President Theodore Roosevelt first likens crusading journalists to a man with “the muckrake in his hand” in a speech to the Gridiron Club in Washington.

1912: The Camp Fire Girls organization is incorporated in Washington, D.C., two years to the day after it was founded in Thetford, Vt. (The group is now known as Camp Fire USA.)

1942: Six days after departing the Philippines during World War II, Gen. Douglas MacArthur declares, “I came through and I shall return” as he arrives in Australia to become supreme commander of Allied forces in the southwest Pacific theater.

1950: Scientists at the University of California at Berkeley announce they have created a new radioactive element, “californium.”

1966: A U.S. midget submarine locates a missing hydrogen bomb which had fallen from an American bomber into the Mediterranean off Spain.

1970: The United States casts its first veto in the U.N. Security Council. (The U.S. killed a resolution that would have condemned Britain for failure to use force to overthrow the white-ruled government of Rhodesia.)

In Illinois, Sen. Alan Dixon is defeated in his primary re-election bid by Carol Moseley-Braun, who goes on to become the first black woman in the U.S. Senate.

VINDICATOR FILES

1987: Dr. Brendan Minogue, a philosophy professor at Youngstown State University, talks about his journey from growing up in an Irish ghetto in New York City to Ohio, where he is not only a teacher, but a performer in Irish bands and a student of Irish heritage.

Pandora Fecko, all-time career scorer for the Cardinal Mooney Lady Cards, heads the 1986-87 All-Steel Valley Conference basketball team named by loop officials. Others on the first team are Shannon McNally and JoAnn Dzuray, Boardman; D’Nelle Seiple and Julie Victor, Fitch, and Vikki Branca and Jessica Lampley, Ursuline.

The Small Business Administration names David S. Houck, president and founder of McDonald Steel Corp., Ohio’s Small Businessman of the Year.

1972: The strike at the General Motors Assembly Division at Lordstown enters its 13th day as bargaining teams from GM and the UAW resume talks.

Chester Amedia, director of the Youngstown Metropolitan Housing Authority, says rents will be reduced for 685 families on welfare living in YMHA units. The reductions will be between $25 and $35 per month and the federal government is expected to reimburse the agency for its losses.

In a report certain to stir bitter debate, a presidential commission recommends to President Nixon abortion on request and contraceptive services to minors as ways of halting America’s population growth.

1962: Perce Kelty, chief photographer for the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., wins the top award in the Professional Photographer of Ohio Industrial Division for a photo of a white-hot ingot being removed from the Campbell Works soaking pit.

An 8-year-old Liberty Township boy, Walter Kaszowski, injured when he fell down a flight of cellar steps at his home, dies of an apparent brain hemorrhage in North Side Hospital.

U.S. Rep. Michael J. Kirwan of Youngstown spends “a very pleasant “ 20 minutes at the White House when he calls to extend St. Patrick’s Day greetings to President John F. Kennedy.

1937: Aroused by the traffic death of Charles Hill, the fourth traffic fatality in Youngstown in two weeks, city police arrest 24 motorists on traffic charges over the weekend.

A detailed agreement with John L. Lewis’ Committee for Industrial Organization covering wages and working conditions is approved by Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corp. and the U.S. Steel subsidiaries.