Years Ago

Today is Friday, March 21, the 80th day of 2014. There are 285 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1556: Thomas Cranmer, the former archbishop of Canterbury, is burned at the stake for heresy.

1804: The French civil code, or the “Code Napoleon” as it was later called, is adopted.

1871: Journalist Henry M. Stanley begins his famous expedition in Africa to locate the missing Scottish missionary David Livingstone.

1907: U.S. Marines arrive in Honduras to protect American lives and interests in the wake of political violence.

1944: Charles Chaplin goes on trial in Los Angeles, accused of transporting former protegee Joan Barry across state lines for immoral purposes. (Chaplin is acquitted, but later loses a paternity suit despite tests showing he isn’t the father of Barry’s child.)

VINDICATOR FILES

1989: U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. calls for annual testing of well water on farmland, saying there’s a need to separate theory from fact on the damage being done to the water table by herbicides, pesticides and other chemicals.

Dropouts and delinquents would lose their driver’s licenses under a proposed law being pushed by state Rep. Robert F. Hagan, D-Youngstown.

After Holiday Inn cancels its franchise at the MetroPlex Centre in Liberty Township, the center files for bankruptcy reorganization.

1974: Youngstown arson investigators are probing the origins of a fire that caused $7,000 damage to the art room at East High School.

Dr. Thomas Sopkovich, a Boardman dentist, reports he has temporarily wired shut the jaws of eight or nine patients who were inspired by a British woman who lost weight with a similar procedure.

1964: Leon H. Keyserling, chairman of the Conference on Economic Progress in Washington, describes the government’s war on poverty as manicuring the toenails of the poor during an institute on poverty held by the AFL-CIO Community Services Committee at the YMCA.

Five young burglars who have looted 30 houses over six weeks are placed on strict probation, and the two oldest face six months in jail if they violate probation.

Trumbull and Columbiana counties are among 42 counties in Ohio, which Gov. James A. Rhodes included in his request to President Johnson for approval of more than $2 million in federal funds for flood disaster aid.

1939: Sharpsville Village Council and New Castle City Council throw their support behind the proposed Lake Erie-Ohio River waterway.

Judge James E. Bennett accepts the chairmanship of a citizen’s committee that will work for the Lake Erie-Ohio River canal, including going to Washington, D.C.