YEARS AGO

Today is Friday, March 6, the 65th day of 2015. There are 300 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1834: The city of York in Upper Canada is incorporated as Toronto.

1853: Verdi’s opera “La Traviata” premieres in Venice, Italy.

1857: The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Dred Scott v. Sandford that Scott, a slave, is not an American citizen and could not sue for his freedom in federal court.

1933: A national bank holiday declared by President Franklin D. Roosevelt aims at calming panicked depositors goes into effect.

Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, wounded in an attempt on Roosevelt’s life the previous month, dies at a Miami hospital at age 59.

1935:Retired Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., dies in Washington two days before his 94th birthday.

1944: U.S. heavy bombers stage the first full-scale American raid on Berlin during World War II.

1953: Georgy Malenkov is named premier of the Soviet Union a day after the death of Josef Stalin.

1965: Actress Margaret Dumont, perhaps best remembered for playing the foil in Marx Brothers comedies, dies in Hollywood at age 82.

1967: The daughter of Josef Stalin, Svetlana Alliluyeva, appears at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi and declares her intention to defect to the West.

1970: A bomb being built inside a Greenwich Village townhouse by the radical Weathermen accidentally goes off, destroying the house and killing three group members.

1983: In a case that draws much notoriety, a woman is gang-raped atop a pool table in a tavern in New Bedford, Mass., called Big Dan’s; four men are later convicted of the attack.

1995: “The Jenny Jones Show” tapes an episode on same-sex crushes during which Jonathan Schmitz learns his secret admirer is an acquaintance, Scott Amedure; three days later, Schmitz fatally shoots Amedure. (Schmitz is serving a 25- to 50-year prison sentence for second-degree murder; the episode was never included in the “Jenny Jones” syndication package, but did air on Court TV.)

2005: Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena says American soldiers gave no warning before they opened fire on the car carrying her to the Baghdad airport, killing the Italian agent who’d just won her freedom after a month in captivity. The White House calls the shooting a “horrific accident” and restates its promise to investigate fully.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: Poland’s mayor, Merle Madrid, and Canfield Mayor Francis McLaughlin say they are as capable as judges in handling drunken driving cases and oppose a bill that would strip mayor’s courts of authority in driving under the influence cases.

“We need more loose cannons. Maybe then we would not have so many people who don’t know who their congressman is,” says TV host Phil Donahue after U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. appears on Donahue’s syndicated talk show. The populist congressman from the Mahoning Valley clearly won over Donahue’s New York audience.

Twenty-five years after losing her New Castle High School class ring at Lakewood Beach, Patricia M. Bruno of Boardman receives a call that Paul Cramer, a metal detector enthusiast, found the ring in the now-drained lakebed. The former Patricia Peluso is once again wearing the ring she never expected to see again.

1975: Albee Homes Inc. of Niles files for court protection under Chapter XI of the Bankruptcy Act, citing assets of $10.2 million and liabilities of $12.7 million.

A Mahoning County jury of five women and three men returns a verdict of $25,000 in damages for Ohio Highway Patrolman Larry Myers against Pittsburgh Steelers football star Ernie Holmes, who shot Myers during a manhunt March 16, 1973, after Holmes opened fire on motorists.

Youngstown City School District ranks eighth among Ohio’s 10 largest school districts in pay for starting teachers at $8,050. Akron is first at $8,840, and Canton is 10th at $7,900.

1965: Dr. Frank Cunningham, the son of a Mississippi tenant farmer who grew up in Canton, Ohio, graduated from nearby Mount Union College and went on to be president of Morrow Brown College, dies at his Atlanta Home. He was 53.

The Youngstown North High Bulldogs streak into district play in the Class AA basketball tournament with a convincing 81-66 victory over the Brookfield Warriors at Struthers Field House.

1940: Foreign spies no longer have easy access to Youngstown district steel plants, which are important to national defense. Visitors to steel mills must be American citizens and give their name, address and business before being given access.

Construction of two large reservoirs with a total capacity five times that of Lake Milton is recommended by the water committee of the Warren Chamber of Commerce to provide for Warren’s domestic and industrial needs.