YEARS AGO

Today is Monday, March 23, the 82nd day of 2015. There are 283 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1775: Patrick Henry delivers an address to the Virginia Provincial Convention in which he declares, “Give me liberty, or give me death!”

1806: Explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, having reached the Pacific coast, begin their journey back east.

1914: The first installment of “The Perils of Pauline,” the legendary silent film serial starring Pearl White, premieres in the Greater New York City area.

1919: Benito Mussolini founds his Fascist political movement in Milan, Italy.

1933: The German Reichstag adopts the Enabling Act, which effectively grants Adolf Hitler dictatorial powers.

1940: The radio program “Truth or Consequences,” hosted by Ralph Edwards, is first broadcast over four CBS radio stations in New York and New England.

1942: The first Japanese-Americans evacuated by the U.S. Army during World War II arrive at the internment camp in Manzanar, Calif.

1956: Pakistan becomes an Islamic republic.

1973: Before sentencing a group of Watergate break-in defendants, Chief U.S. District Judge John J. Sirica reads aloud a letter he’d received from James W. McCord Jr., which said there had been “political pressure” to “plead guilty and remain silent.”

1983: President Ronald Reagan first proposes developing technology to intercept incoming enemy missiles — an idea that comes to be known as the Strategic Defense Initiative.

Dr. Barney Clark, recipient of a Jarvik permanent artificial heart, dies at the University of Utah Medical Center after 112 days with the device.

1990: The romantic comedy “Pretty Woman,” starring Richard Gere and Julia Roberts, is released by Buena Vista Pictures.

2011: Academy Award-winning actress Elizabeth Taylor dies in Los Angeles at age 79.

2005: A federal appeals court refuses to reinsert Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube and the Florida Legislature decides not to intervene in the epic struggle over the brain-damaged woman; Schiavo’s parents then file a request with the U.S. Supreme Court.

An explosion at a BP oil refinery in Texas City, Texas, kills 15 people.

2014: In Beijing, U.S. first lady Michelle Obama tells Chinese professors, students and parents that she wouldn’t have risen to where she was if her parents hadn’t pushed for her to get a good education.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: After $3 billion and two years of construction, Saturn Corp. begins test production on its assembly line in Spring Hill, Tenn.

Edward Swiger Jr. is sentenced to a minimum of 40 years in prison for the 1988 slaying of Roger Pratt, a student at Thiel College, but Pratt’s family says they would have preferred the death penalty.

Liberty High School’s Bobby Patton Jr. is named Ohio’s “Mr. Basketball,” a titled bestowed by the Associated Press on the player deemed the state’s best.

1975: George R. Reiss, Vindicator business editor, writes that Youngstown’s future as a major urban center by the year 2000, hinges in part on its success within five or 10 years in revitalizing its basic steel industry.

Four young adults and a juvenile from Columbiana County draw six-year prison terms after a trial in Spain on drug charges. They were accused of smuggling 150 pounds of hashish into the country, but they claimed they were unaware of the drugs that were found in a borrowed van.

Some 1,200 young volunteers for the Mahoning Chapter of the Red Cross receive awards at a recognition ceremony at St. Elizabeth Hospital. Receiving Clara Barton Awards for 500 hours of service were Barbara Adorjan, Peggy Bindas, Deana Caccamo, Colleen Carney, Lark Galey, William Hayes, Robert Osiniak, Mary Beth Patrick, Cheryl Slemons and Ken Stinson.

1965: Astronauts Virgil Grissom and John Young are in orbit, beginning America’s first two-man space flight, circling the earth three times during a five-hour flight.

The Lowellville High School band and the West Branch High Band win superior ratings in the Northeast Ohio Band Contest at Warren.

1940: Seven bids are received by Youngstown’s Board of Control for the collection and disposal of garbage in the city.

Youngstown registers its eighth and ninth traffic fatalities of the year with the deaths of Mrs. Thomas Rankin, 63, and Thomas Bijac, 70, in separate accidents.

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