YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

Today is Tuesday, March 1, the 61st day of 2016. There are 305 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1565: The city of Rio de Janeiro is founded by Portuguese knight Estacio de Sa.

1790: President George Washington signs a measure authorizing the first U.S. Census.

1815: Napoleon, having escaped exile in Elba, arrives in Cannes, France, and heads for Paris to begin his “Hundred Days” rule.

1867: Nebraska becomes the 37th state.

1890: J.P. Lippincott publishes the first U.S. edition of the Sherlock Holmes mystery “A Study in Scarlet” by Arthur Conan Doyle.

1932: Charles A. Lindbergh Jr., the 20-month-old son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh, is kidnapped from the family home near Hopewell, N.J. (Remains identified as those of the child were found the following May.)

1940: “Native Son” by Richard Wright is first published by Harper & Brothers.

1954: Four Puerto Rican nationalists open fire from the spectators’ gallery of the U.S. House of Representatives, wounding five members of Congress.

1961: President John F. Kennedy signs an executive order establishing the Peace Corps.

1966: The Soviet space probe Venera 3 impacts the surface of Venus, becoming the first spacecraft to reach another planet; however, Venera is unable to transmit any data, its communications system having failed.

1971: A bomb goes off inside a men’s room at the U.S. Capitol; the radical group Weather Underground claims responsibility for the pre-dawn blast.

1981: Irish Republican Army member Bobby Sands begins a hunger strike at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland; he died 65 days later.

1996: President Bill Clinton slaps economic sanctions on Colombia, concluding that Colombian authorities have not fully cooperated with the U.S. war on drugs.

The Food and Drug Administration approves a powerful new AIDS drug, saying ritonavir could prolong slightly the lives of severely ill patients.

2006: President George W. Bush, en route to India and Pakistan, makes a surprise visit to Afghanistan to show U.S. support for the country’s fledgling democracy.

2011: Yemen’s embattled president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, accuses the U.S., his closest ally, of instigating the mounting protests against him, but the gambit fails to slow the momentum of his ouster (he later apologized to Washington).

2015: Tens of thousands march through Moscow in honor of slain Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who had been shot to death Feb. 27.

Minnie “Cuban Comet” Minoso, Major League Baseball’s first black Latino star, dies in Chicago. (There was some question about Minoso’s age, but the medical examiner’s office and the White Sox said he was 90.)

VINDICATOR FILES

1991: Two Salem men are indicted on felony drug charges in Ellis County, Texas, and authorities there say there could be more arrests of local men in connection with marijuana trafficking.

Former and current police officials and one township trustee say that Brookfield police Chief Thomas Jones placed electronic listening devices in the dispatcher’s room at a time when police officers were talking about unionizing.

Archie Herring, president of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity at Youngstown State University, says fraternity members are concerned about increasing violence on city streets and will be meeting with city council members to discuss how the fraternity might help reduce violence.

1976: The girls basketball team of Fairhaven School for the Mentally Retarded in Niles and the Fairhaven Sheltered Workshop wins the Division I championship at the first female Special Olympics basketball tournament at Ohio State University.

A dynamite blast causes $40,000 in damage to the Mahoning Landfill Inc. transfer station on Poland Avenue.

Seven girls and five boys join the area’s exclusive Leap Year Day Birthday Club, which “meets” only once every four years. The first of the group was Tonya Lee Bowen of Boardman, born at 6:05 a.m. on Leap Day at St. Elizabeth Hospital.

1966: A Boardman Zoning Commission hearing will reconsider a zoning request by the William Cafaro Co. that would clear the way for construction of an $8.5 million enclosed shopping mall across from Boardman High School.

Girard City Council seeks a new contract with Niles that would give Girard a discount on the water it purchases if the bill is paid promptly.

Completion of work on the Assumption Nursing Home is expected to resume. The building was begun three years ago, but problems brought construction to a halt.

1941: The National Association of Manufacturers’ annual regional meeting will take place in May in Youngstown. Delegates will board special trains in Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Akron.

George Brainard, president of General Fireproofing Co. and chairman of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank in Cleveland, is named district coordinator of defense contract services.

The aurora borealis, the “northern lights,” is so strong in the Mahoning Valley that they interfered with wire and wireless communication, the Youngstown Western Union office reports.