Years Ago

Today is Tuesday, March 17, the 76th day of 2015. There are 289 days left in the year. This is St. Patrick’s Day.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1776: British forces evacuate Boston during the Revolutionary War.

1861: Victor Emmanuel II is proclaimed the first king of a united Italy.

1906: President Theodore Roosevelt first likens crusading journalists to a man with “the muckrake in his hand” in a speech to the Gridiron Club in Washington.

1912: The Camp Fire Girls organization is incorporated in Washington, D.C., two years to the day after it was founded in Thetford, Vt. (It is now known as Camp Fire USA.)

1943: The Taoiseach of Ireland, Eamon de Valera, delivers a radio speech about “The Ireland That We Dreamed Of.”

1950: Scientists at the University of California at Berkeley announce they have created a new radioactive element, “californium.”

1959: The Dalai Lama flees Tibet for India in the wake of a failed uprising by Tibetans against Chinese rule.

1966: A U.S. midget submarine locates a missing hydrogen bomb that had fallen from an American bomber into the Mediterranean off Spain.

1969: Golda Meir becomes prime Minister of Israel.

1970: The United States casts its first veto in the U.N. Security Council. (The U.S. killed a resolution that would have condemned Britain for failure to use force to overthrow the white-ruled government of Rhodesia.)

1988: Avianca Flight 410, a Boeing 727, crashes after takeoff into a mountain in Colombia, killing all 143 people on board.

1995: Flor Contemplacion, a Filipino maid, is hanged in Singapore for murder, despite international pleas to spare her.

2005: Baseball players tell Congress that steroids are a problem in the sport; stars Rafael Palmeiro and Sammy Sosa testify they hadn’t used them while Mark McGwire refuses to say whether he had. (McGwire owned up to steroid use in January 2010.)

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: Nine of the 17 patients in a unit at Southside Medical Center are being isolated because they have staph infections, officials of Western Reserve Care System confirm.

The Rev. Roger Shoup, a recent interim pastor at Lake Shores Presbyterian Church, St. Clair Shores, Mich., is named pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church, 119 Stadium Drive, Boardman.

Youngstown City Council members, who had said they’d trim fat from the city’s budget, add $5,000 to their travel allocation, raising it to $20,000.

1975: Mary Melnick, 66, is killed and her husband, Walter, 69, injured when their car goes out of control in Hillman Street and crashes through the front door of the Golden Nugget Night Club.

When not teaching education classes at Youngstown State University or coaching the YSU rifle team, Professor Dwight G. Watkins pursues his hobby of making replicas of early American firearms.

Operators of the A&P food chain say they may close as many as 1,200 of the company’s 3,500 nationwide stores during the next 12 months. The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. is in its 159 th year and has 100,000 employees.

1965: Stanley E. Babcock, Beechwood Drive, is appointed assistant industrial engineer at U.S. Steel’s Youngstown Works.

Boardman High uses up its 2,900 ticket allotment for the Boardman-Canton South tournament game at the Kent Field House. No tickets will be available at the door.

GF promotes five men: Clyde Heinzer, chief industrial engineer; Elmer L. Ball, production superintendent; John A. Barile, superintendent, desk division; Jack Selikson, foreman, roll form and plating; John Kalhoun, foreman, welding and desk assembly.

1940: Jacob Ague, 73, of 1013 Marble St., dies in South Side Hospital of injuries suffered when he was struck by a Youngstown Municipal Railway Co. bus in Federal Street.

Jobless Youngstowners received 8,722 unemployment checks in February totaling $83,608. Average payments were $10.80 for full employment and $5.32 for partial.

The first operations of Copperweld Steel Co.’s new $2 million plant in Warren is scheduled for April 2, with about half of the normal force of 700 men at work.