YEARS AGO

Today is Sunday, March 22, the 81st day of 2015. There are 284 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1312: Pope Clement V issues a papal bull ordering dissolution of the Order of the Knights Templar.

1638: Religious dissident Anne Hutchinson is expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for defying Puritan orthodoxy.

1765: The British Parliament passes the Stamp Act to raise money from the American colonies, which fiercely resist the tax. (The Stamp Act was repealed a year later.)

1829: U.S. naval hero Stephen Decatur is killed in a duel with Commodore James Barron near Washington, D.C.

1894: Pro hockey’s first Stanley Cup championship game is played; home team Montreal defeats Ottawa, 3-1.

1933: During Prohibition, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs a measure to legalize wine and beer containing up to 3.2 percent alcohol.

1934: The first Masters Tournament opens under the title “Augusta National Invitation Tournament.” Three days later, Horton Smith would win the tournament.

1945: The Arab League is formed with the adoption of a charter in Cairo, Egypt.

1958: Movie producer Mike Todd, husband of actress Elizabeth Taylor, and three other people are killed in the crash of Todd’s private plane near Grants, N.M.

1963: The Beatles’ debut album, “Please Please Me,” is released in the United Kingdom by Parlophone.

1978: Karl Wallenda, the 73-year-old patriarch of “The Flying Wallendas” high-wire act, falls to his death while attempting to walk a cable strung between two hotel towers in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

1990: A jury in Anchorage, Alaska, finds former tanker captain Joseph Hazelwood not guilty of three major charges in connection with the Exxon Valdez oil spill, but it convicts him of a minor charge of negligent discharge of oil.

1995: Convicted Long Island Rail Road gunman Colin Ferguson gets a life sentence in prison for killing six people.

2005: Terri Schiavo’s parents beg a federal appeals court to order the severely brain-damaged woman’s feeding tube reinserted after their emergency request was turned down by a federal judge in Tampa, Fla. (The court refused to intervene.)

A woman claims to have found a severed human fingertip while eating Wendy’s chili at a restaurant in San Jose, Calif., costing the fast-food chain millions in lost sales before she admitted it was a hoax (the digit came from her husband’s co-worker, who’d been in a workplace accident).

2010: Former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton tour the quake-devastated capital of Haiti, a visit intended to remind donors of the immense needs facing the recovery effort.

2014: A massive mudslide in Oso, Wash., kills 43 people and destroys or damages four dozen homes.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: Gov. Richard F. Celeste signs a bill creating a fifth Mahoning County Common Pleas Court trial judgeship.

Cuts in Campbell’s water and sewer rates made by former Mayor James J. Vargo and a lame-duck city council in late 1989 are rescinded by Mayor Dominic Medina and the new council.

Girard Mayor Kenneth Woodford says city water customers are getting clobbered by Niles and Youngstown and predicts that the savings would be considerable if the city bought Liberty Lakes and formed its own water district with Liberty Township.

1975: Only four Warren police officers report for the afternoon shift in an attack of “blue flu.” Mayor Arthur J. Richards begins administering oaths to city officials and assigning them police cruisers as a precaution.

Three Butler County men and a 17-year-old youth are in Butler County Jail, charged with assaulting and raping Slippery Rock State College coeds in recent months. Two of the men and the juvenile were arrested after attempting to abduct an undercover state police trooper.

Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance underwriter Clarence J. Strouss Jr. is named Boss of the Year by the Yo-Mah-O Chapter, National Secretaries Association.

1965: The 12th annual water ballet is scheduled at the YWCA by the Spray Club for a two-night performance. Numbers in “Journey through Fairyland” are arranged by Mary Kay Chuey, Dawn Evans, Lora Enyart and Peggy Martin.

Ohio’s Mother of the Year for 1965 is Mrs. Elizabeth H. Buchanan of New Philadelphia, a 65-year-old mother of four.

David Hogue, 16-year-old Sharon High School junior, wins the fourth annual piano competition sponsored by the Youngstown Symphony Society. He will appear with the Youngstown Philharmonic Orchestra in its children’s concert series.

1940: The Rev. Joseph N. Trainor, dean of Mahoning County Catholic clergy and pastor of St. Columba Church, is elevated by Pope Pius XII to the rank of domestic prelate with the title of Right Reverend Monsignor.

Three bandits take more than two hours to bind and rob 23 men and women at the Evergreen Inn on Mahoning Avenue NW in Warren. They escape with $250 in cash and about $500 in clothing and other loot.

Former Youngstown vice cop Herbert F. Bodine plans to take his suit seeking $400,000 against reputed owners of the “Big House,” the city’s largest numbers operation, to the Ohio Supreme Court after the suit is dismissed by the Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.