YEARS AGO

Today is Monday, March 2, the 61st day of 2015. There are 304 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1793: The first president of the Republic of Texas, Sam Houston, is born near Lexington, Va.

1836: The Republic of Texas formally declares its independence from Mexico.

1865: Congress establishes the position of naval judge advocate general.

1877: Republican Rutherford B. Hayes is declared the winner of the 1876 presidential election over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, even though Tilden had won the popular vote.

1939: Roman Catholic Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli is elected pope on his 63rd birthday; he takes the name Pius XII.

The Massachusetts Legislature votes to ratify the Bill of Rights, 147 years after the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution had gone into effect. (Georgia and Connecticut soon followed.)

1940: The cartoon character Elmer Fudd makes his debut in the Warner Bros. animated short “Elmer’s Candid Camera,” in which the title character finds himself pitted against a rascally rabbit that was a precursor to Bugs Bunny.

1955: Nine months before Rosa Parks’ famous act of defiance, Claudette Colvin, a black high school student in Montgomery, Ala., is arrested after refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white passenger.

1962: Wilt Chamberlain scores 100 points for the Philadelphia Warriors in a game against the New York Knicks, an NBA record that still stands. (Philadelphia won, 169-147.)

1965: The movie version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broadway musical “The Sound of Music,” starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, has its world premiere at New York’s Rivoli Theater.

1972: The United States launches the Pioneer 10 space probe, which would fly past Jupiter in late 1973, sending back images and scientific data.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: Marilyn Quayle, wife of Vice President Dan Quayle, tells 400 people attending the McKinley Club Banquet in Niles that “happiness is being a Republican on the eve of a new century.” During her visit to the Mahoning Valley, she also went to Watson Elementary School in Austintown.

Campbell Health Commissioner Richard J. Fiorini and two associates with the Finishing Corp. of America are fined a total of $186,000 for discharging industrial pollutants into Campbell’s sewer system.

The U.S. Census Bureau’s one-night count of the homeless is “a joke” that will distort the count, says Bill Faith, head of the Ohio Coalition for the Homeless.

1975: Helen Andrews, 60, a widow working at the LaFrance Dry Cleaners, 833 South Ave., is shot and killed during a robbery at the store.

GF Business Equipment Inc. buys a 130-acre site directly across Youngstown-Hubbard Road from the present plant, and President Robert E. Williams says a new plant will be built.

Youngstown naval recruiting station reports enlisting 12 local men and a woman, Frances Kurylak, 177 Parkgate Ave., during February.

1965: Earnings of the General American Transportation Corp. reached an all-time high in 1964 of $24.7 million, or $4.14 per share.

Religious Emphasis Week ends at Youngstown University after a series of services and devotional at St. John’s Church, Pilgrim Collegiate Church, St. Joseph Church and St. Columba Cathedral.

The Youngstown Board of Education names Herbert Armstrong, 46, principal of Covington School, succeeding the late Elmer Dunn.

1940: Attorney George J. Renner joins Attorney Charles H. Anderson of Hubbard and Marcus V. McEvoy, Howland schoolmaster, in seeking the Republican nomination for the 19th Congressional District seat held by Democrat Michael J. Kirwan of Youngstown.

Fred Shutrump, new chairman of the Mahoning County Board of Elections, suggests purchasing voting machines for Campbell’s 15 precincts in response to alleged irregularities in the fall election for the board of education.

Dr. Howard Talbott, pastor of First Presbyterian Church, tells 300 men and women at the annual St. David’s Day banquet at Westminster Church that “only spiritual and moral cowards” can ignore the challenges of the day and human misery.