Years Ago

Today is Saturday, March 31, the 91st day of 2012. There are 275 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1889: French engineer Gustave Eiffel unfurls the French tricolor from atop the Eiffel Tower, officially marking its completion.

1931: Notre Dame college football coach Knute Rockne, 43, is killed in the crash of a TWA plane in Bazaar, Kan.

1932: Ford Motor Co. publicly unveils its powerful flathead V8 engine; while not the first eight-cylinder engine, it is the first to be affordable to the general public, and proved very popular.

1933: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Emergency Conservation Work Act, which created the Civilian Conservation Corps.

1943: The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “Oklahoma!” opens on Broadway.

1953: Stanley Kubrick’s first feature film, a war drama titled “Fear and Desire,” premieres in New York.

1968: President Lyndon B. Johnson stuns the country by announcing at the conclusion of a broadcast address on Vietnam that he would not seek re-election.

1976: The New Jersey Supreme Court rules that Karen Ann Quinlan, who is in a persistent vegetative state, could be disconnected from her respirator. (Quinlan, who remained unconscious, died in 1985.)

1986: One hundred and sixty-seven people die when a Mexicana Airlines Boeing 727 crashes in a remote mountainous region of Mexico.

1995: Mexican-American singer Selena Quintanilla-Perez, 23, is shot to death in Corpus Christi, Texas, by the founder of her fan club, Yolanda Saldivar, who was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.

2005: Terri Schiavo, 41, dies at a hospice in Pinellas Park, Fla., 13 days after her feeding tube was removed in a wrenching right-to-die dispute.

VINDICATOR FILES

1987: Mahoning County Common Pleas Judge William G. Houser orders Austintown Township trustees to rezone land at Rt. 46 and Interstate 80 from agricultural to business to allow construction of a planned truck stop.

U.S. Rep. Tom Ridge of Erie, Pa., R-21st, tells area officials meeting in Hermitage to brace themselves for cuts in federal programs that will be pursued by the Reagan administration.

Early retirements and increased orders allow Copperweld Steel Co. to recall 175 laid off employees in Warren.

1972: U.S. Steel Corp.’s Ohio Works, idle for six months, relights its 10th open hearth, reaching its peak of capacity.

The Youngstown Board of Education approves a $34 million budget for a district that is educating some 25,000 children.

Coming to the Packard Music Hall, an all-pro boxing show. Feature bout: Warren’s Earnie Shaver vs. Charlie Polite of Springfield, Mass.

1962: Two gunmen, masked and efficient, enter Allen’s Drugstore on Gypsy Lane shortly before closing and escape with $3,000 in cash and negotiable money orders.

Cal Minyard, proprietor of Big Jim’s Barbeque in Campbell, is arrested following a raid in which gambling slips and 600 cartons of stolen cigarettes are confiscated.

Last-minute crowds jam auto license outlets for 1962 license plates. The Youngstown Auto Club opened its doors early and had 27 clerks on duty to handle the rush.

1937: Mrs. Dick McKibben and her 8-year-old daughter, Martha, are missing following a $500,000 explosion and fire that destroyed the four-story St. Cloud building in the heart of New Castle’s business section. The McKibbens lived on the fourth floor of the building.

Youngstown Police Chief Carl L. Olson warns that his men will arrest drivers who do not replace their 1936 license plates with 1937 plates by the April 1 deadline.