Years Ago

Today is Sunday, March 18, the 78th day of 2012. There are 288 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1911: Irving Berlin’s first major hit, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” is first published by Ted Snyder & Co. of New York.

The Theodore Roosevelt Dam in Arizona is dedicated by its namesake, the former president.

1922: Twelve-year-old rabbi’s daughter Judith Kaplan becomes the first American Bat Mitzvah in a ceremony at the Society for the Advancement of Judaism in New York City.

1937: Some 300 people, mostly children, are killed in a gas explosion at a school in New London, Texas.

1942: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs an executive order authorizing the War Relocation Authority, which was put in charge of interning Japanese-Americans, with Milton S. Eisenhower (the younger brother of Dwight D. Eisenhower) as its director.

1974: Most of the Arab oil-producing nations end their embargo against the United States.

1980: Frank Gotti, the 12-year-old youngest son of mobster John Gotti, is struck and killed by a car driven by John Favara, a neighbor in Queens, N.Y. (The following July, Favara vanishes, the apparent victim of a gang hit.)

VINDICATOR FILES

1987: The Ohio Department of Natural Resources unveils maps of the proposed Lake Milton State Park, which it hopes to have in operation by 1988.

Mahoning County commissioners Thomas J. Carney, Leonard Yurcho and John Palermo say they will stand by their decision to relocate the county’s welfare offices to an East Side shopping plaza in spite of protests by opposition groups who wanted the offices kept downtown.

Bazetta Township Trustees are collecting petitions from residents opposed to proposed sprint car racing at the Trumbull County Fairgrounds.

1972: Ralph DeMain, 61, of Lincoln Park Drive, co-owner of the Royal Oaks Tavern, 924 Oak St., is gunned down and killed while his two brothers and four patrons are forced to lie on the floor by a rifle wielding bandit.

Negotiations resume in the two week old strike that has idled 7,800 UAW workers at the Lordstown General Motors complex.

The Ohio Department of Highways outlines tentative plans to alter 17 crossings and intersections along state Route 11 in Trumbull County at a cost of $4.8 million.

1962: Two new Catholic high schools to accommodate 2,600 pupils are being planned by the Diocese of Youngstown, one in Warren and one in Stark County.

A report shows almost $71 million was borrowed by 151,115 college students under the National Defense Student Loan program during the 1960-61 academic year.

Advertisement: Limited time only, Plymouth Valiant 2-door sedans, right of the carriers at factory prices: $1,789, at Al Wagner Motor Sales Co.

1937: Proposals to appoint more municipal court judges and increase their salaries and widen the court’s powers are overwhelmingly opposed by the Mahoning County Bar Association.

In an effort to limit roughhousing that has infiltrated basketball, rule makers consider removing the center jump from the cage code that governs every college, prep school and YMCA game in the nation.

A year of peace is promised in the nation’s steel industry by the signing of new agreements between five large subsidiaries of U.S. Steel Corp. and John L. Lewis’s Steel Workers Organizing Committee.

A Lawrence County jury frees Rocco Esposito of a charge of murdering Francesco Romeo 31 years earlier in West Pittsburgh. Esposito was returned to New Castle for trial from Canada, where he had been living a respectable life as the father of four.