Years Ago

Today is Thursday, March 22, the 82nd day of 2012. There are 284 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1312: Pope Clement V issues a papal bull ordering the dissolution of the Order of the Knights Templar.

1638: Religious dissident Anne Hutchinson is expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for defying Puritan orthodoxy.

1765: The British Parliament passes the Stamp Act of 1765 to raise money from the American colonies, which fiercely resisted the tax. (The Stamp Act is repealed a year later.)

1820: U.S. naval hero Stephen Decatur is killed in a duel with Commodore James Barron near Washington, D.C.

1894: Hockey’s first Stanley Cup championship game is played; home team Montreal defeats Ottawa, 3-1.

1912: Academy Award-winning actor Karl Malden is born Mladen George Sekulovich in Chicago.

1933: During Prohibition, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs a measure to make wine and beer containing up to 3.2 percent alcohol legal.

1941: The Grand Coulee hydroelectric dam in Washington state goes into operation.

1958: Movie producer Mike Todd, the husband of actress Elizabeth Taylor, and three other people are killed in the crash of Todd’s private plane near Grants, N.M.

VINDICATOR FILES

1987: U.S. Rep James A. Traficant Jr., D-17th, gets national attention for his comparison of the “freedom fighters” with whom the Reagan administration has been working in the Iran-Contra scandal as the Three Stooges.

Mahoning County Domestic Court Judge John J. Leskovyansky accepts Ohio Chief Justice Thomas Moyer’s request to stay on as chairman of the Supreme Court Advisory Committee on Child Support Enforcement.

1972: A proposal to lift Ohio’s ban on lotteries will be placed before the state’s voters as a constitutional amendment on the May primary ballot.

Four young Hillman Junior High School students plead guilty before Juvenile Judge Martin Joyce to the armed robbery of Lee’s Gift Shop at 1745 Market St.

Bob Huggins of Gnadenhutten Indian Valley South, the all-time Ohio basketball scoring champion, is named the Associated Press Class A player of the year in Ohio.

1962: About 22,000 Columbiana County residents get the Sabin oral polio immunization on the first day of the program, a figure that Dr. Leonard Richard, president of the county Medical Society, described as disappointingly low.

A high-speed joy ride ends in death for the 14-year-old Windham boy who was driving his parents’ car without permission and struck a bridge railing about a mile and a half from his home.

A Michigan airplane pilot, lost and trapped above heavy clouds, is located and guided by a Youngstown executive plane carrying two steel company executives to a safe landing at Youngstown Municipal Airport.

The Youngstown Bowling Association Team is eliminated from the American Bowling Congress Tournament in Des Moines, Iowa, after rolling only 2638.

1937: Nearly 3,000 people fill Stambaugh Auditorium for a Palm Sunday service that includes a performance of Maunder’s cantata, “From Olivet to Cavalry,” by a choir of 100 voices from churches throughout Youngstown.

Two explosions only minutes apart damage three houses on W. Wood Street and North Avenue that are alleged to be disorderly houses. Police suggest that “half-baked racketeers” were involved.