YEARS AGO

Today is Friday, March 27, the 86th day of 2015. There are 279 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1912: First lady Helen Herron Taft and the wife of Japan’s ambassador to the United States, Viscountess Chinda, plant in Washington the first two of 3,000 cherry trees given as a gift by the mayor of Tokyo.

1933: Japan officially withdraws from the League of Nations.

1940: Alfred Hitchcock’s first American movie, “Rebecca,” starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, premieres in Los Angeles.

1945: During World War II, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower tells reporters in Paris that Germany’s main defensive line on the Western Front has been broken.

1958: Nikita Khrushchev becomes Soviet premier in addition to First Secretary of the Communist Party.

1964: Alaska is hit by a magnitude 9.2 earthquake (the strongest on record in North America) and tsunamis that together claim about 130 lives.

1975: Construction begins on the Trans- Alaska Pipeline, which was completed two years later.

1977: Five hundred and eighty-three people are killed when a KLM Boeing 747, trying to take off, crashes into a Pan Am 747 on the Canary Island of Tenerife.

1980: One hundred and twenty-three workers die when a North Sea floating oil field platform, the Alexander Kielland, capsizes during a storm.

1990: The U.S. begins test broadcasts of TV Marti to Cuba, which promptly jams the signal.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: Five Mahoning Valley men are indicted by a federal grand jury in Cleveland on charges of operating a $3-million-a-year numbers and sports bookmaking ring in Northeast Ohio.

A spokesman for Amtrak confirms U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant’s announcement that Amtrak had agreed to reroute its New York-to-Chicago Broadway Limited train through Youngstown. The city, however, will have to provide passenger-handling facilities before the train will stop in Youngstown.

The Ohio Turnpike Commission votes to hire a consulting engineer and to acquire the land necessary for construction of a turnpike interchange at Ellsworth-Bailey Road, which would provide quick access to General Motors’ complex in Lordstown.

1975: A six-day walkout by 100 members of the Warren city police force ends as members of the Warren Police Association comply with a restraining order issued by visiting Common Pleas Judge Sidney J. Rigelhaupt.

Youngstown City Council passes a consumer protection ordinance that will be enforced by the city sealer of weights and measures.

Arthur J. Louk, 22, a night attendant at the Martin’s Service Station on Mc-Cartney Road in Campbell, is in St. Elizabeth Hospital after being shot in the face by a gunman who robbed him of $29.

1965: Youngstown State University’s Dana School of Music presents “Rita,” a one-act Donizetti opera in the C.J. Strouss Auditorium. Sally Ann Crespy appeared in the title role, James Antell played her henpecked husband. and James Hughes was her long-lost first husband.

John F. “Fat” O’Malley, one of Rayen School’s greatest linemen in its football history, dies in Valparaiso, Ind., at age 63.

1940: Disaster strikes Salineville, a town of 2,100, when a spectacular fire destroys a coal tipple at the Hirst & Co. cooperative mine, putting 140 men out of work.

Mahoning County commissioners will issue $200,000 in bonds against delinquent taxes to meet relief needs until July.

Charlotte Lockwood, an eminent although young organist, presents a recital at Stambaugh Auditorium under the auspices of the Youngstown sub-chapter of the American Guild of Organists.