YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

Today is Tuesday, March 24, the 83rd day of 2015. There are 282 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1832: A mob in Hiram, Ohio, in Portage County, attacks, tars and feathers Mormon leaders Joseph Smith Jr. and Sidney Rigdon.

1913: New York’s Palace Theatre, the legendary home of vaudeville, opens on Broadway.

1934: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs a bill granting future independence to the Philippines.

1944: In occupied Rome, the Nazis execute more than 300 civilians in reprisal for an attack by Italian partisans the day before that had killed 32 German soldiers.

1955: The Tennessee Williams play “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” opens on Broadway.

1958: Rock ’n’ roll singer Elvis Presley is inducted into the Army in Memphis, Tenn.

1975: Muhammad Ali defeats Chuck Wepner with a technical knockout in the 15th round of a fight at The Coliseum in Richfield, Ohio, near Cleveland. (Wepner, a journeyman known as the “Bayonne Bleeder,” inspired Sly Stallone to make his “Rocky” films.)

1976: The president of Argentina, Isabel Peron, is deposed by her country’s military.

1980: One of El Salvador’s most respected Roman Catholic Church leaders, Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, is shot to death by a sniper as he celebrates Mass in San Salvador.

1989: Supertanker Exxon Valdez runs aground on a reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound and begins leaking an estimated 11 million gallons of crude oil.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: Youngstown Police Chief Randall Wellington tells City Council that the city’s police force has dropped from 292 in 1978 to 180 in 1990, and there is no money in the budget to reverse the trend.

A coalition of black community leaders warns that eliminating Warren’s 25-employee Sanitation Department, which includes 21 black workers, in favor of a private contractor could lead to unrest in the city.

Youngstown’s two Muslim communities, the Islamic Society of Greater Youngstown, Homewood Avenue, and the Woodland Avenue Mosque, prepare for the 30-day observance of Ramadan.

Sister Patricia McNicholas is elected general superior of the Ursuline Sisters of Youngstown, succeeding Sister Nancy Dawson.

1975: Youngstown State University Athletic Director Paul Amodio says he has received 40 applications for the head football coaching job vacated by Rey Dempsey.

Niles Fairhaven captures its first championship in the Schools for the Retarded State Basketball Tournament as Coach Tony Morelli’s team beats Akron Weaver, 66-30, before 1,200 fans at YSU’s Beeghly Center.

The body of an unidentified man is found in the rubble of the Sew and Sound building at 4175 Mahoning Ave. Austintown Police Chief James Hazlett says another man seen running from the building may have been injured.

1965: Mrs. Caroline Stambaugh DuPont Page, granddaughter of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. founder James A. Campbell, dies of heart of a heart attack at her residence in the Bahamas.

All full-time Youngstown municipal employees will receive pay raises of $30 per month. Mayor Anthony B. Flask said the raises will cost the city $492,444 and were made possible by increased income tax receipts and an unexpectedly high inheritance tax distribution.

1940: Despite cold unseasonable weather, Easter sales in Youngstown are reported extremely heavy and apparently higher than in 1939.

The Chardon Maple Festival is expected to attract 140,000 visitors over its three-day weekend.

Ohio Welfare Director Charles L. Sherwood predicts that expanded state hospital facilities in Cleveland, Hawthornden, Toledo, Massillon, Cincinnati and Dayton will permit the admittance of 800 new insane patients by July 1.