Today in history : Sunday, March 9, the 68th day of 2014

Today is Sunday, March 9, the 68th day of 2014. There are 297 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1796: The future emperor of the French, Napoleon Bonaparte, marries Josephine de Beauharnais. (The couple later divorced.)

1862: In the Civil War, the ironclads USS Monitor and CSS Virginia clash for five hours to a draw at Hampton Roads, Va.

1916: Mexican raiders led by Pancho Villa attack Columbus, N.M., killing 18 Americans.

1933: Congress, called into special session by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, begins its “hundred days” of enacting New Deal legislation.

1945: During World War II, U.S. B-29 bombers launch incendiary bomb attacks against Japan, resulting in an estimated 100,000 deaths.

1964: The first Ford Mustang, a Wimbledon White convertible, rolls off the production line in Dearborn, Mich.

1964: The U.S. Supreme Court, in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, raises the standard for proving libel, unanimously ruling that public officials who charge they have been defamed by the press concerning their official duties have to demonstrate “actual malice” on the part of the news organization.

1994: The U.N. Human Rights Commission condemns anti-Semitism, putting the world body on record for the first time as opposing discrimination against Jews.

1997: Gangsta rapper The Notorious B.I.G. (real name: Christopher Wallace) is killed in a still-unsolved drive-by shooting in Los Angeles; he was 24.

2004: Convicted D.C. Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad is sentenced to death by a judge in Virginia (Muhammad was executed in Nov. 2009)

VINDICATOR FILES

1989: Youngstown City Council rejects U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr.’s proposed regionalization of water management in Mahoning and Trumbull counties.

The Ohio House votes 96-1 for a bill introduced by state Rep. Ronald V. Gerberry of Austintown that would do away with differentiated high school diplomas and require that all high school students be tested for basic skills before graduating.

Two former POWS, Charles Plumb of California and Bob Shumaker of New Castle, are guests of honor at the Greater New Castle Chamber of Commerce dinner, the first time they’ve been together since they had adjoining cells in a North Vietnamese prison camp.

1974: Two of the five East High School students charged with being delinquent by abusing a 23-year-old woman teacher are sentenced on a permanent basis to the Ohio Youth Commission.

A struggle over a pistol ends in the fatal shooting of Terry Smith, 35, of Poland in the parking lot of the Crossroads Tavern in Coitsville Township. A 39-year-old Youngstown man is under arrest.

Frederick A. Vierow, acting director of the Ohio Department of Highway Safety, says the drop in traffic fatalities resulting from lower speed limits tied to the energy crisis, may show that the 55-mph speed limit should become permanent.

1964: Hancock County, W.Va., Sheriff Joe Manypenny denies charges made by James F. Edwards, president of Waterford Park, that the sheriff’s department made traffic checks near the track in reprisal for the track refusing to issue free passes to deputies.

Atty. Thomas W. Moore of Youngstown, a leader in veterans affairs, is named U.S. commissioner for the Youngstown area by the judges of the Northern District of Ohio federal court at Cleveland.

1939: Youngstown Mayor Lionel Evans says the city will try to upset an Ohio Supreme Court ruling that awarded former Patrolman Edward Welsch $306 representing six weeks’ pay Welsch did not receive in 1932 and 1934. The ruling could force payment of $90,000 to other police and firemen.

“Congress listens to pressure,” Scott Harvey, superintendent of navigation of the U.S. Army Corps at Pittsburgh, tells Youngstown Rotary Club members while discussing the Lake Erie-Ohio River canal at the Hotel Ohio.