YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

Today is Tuesday, March 8, the 68th day of 2016. There are 298 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1702: England’s Queen Anne accedes to the throne upon the death of King William III.

1854: U.S. Commodore Matthew C. Perry makes his second landing in Japan; within a month, he concludes a treaty with the Japanese.

1874: The 13th president of the United States, Millard Fillmore, dies in Buffalo, N.Y., at age 74.

1917: Russia’s “February Revolution” (referring to the Old Style calendar) begins in Petrograd; the result is the abdication of the Russian monarchy in favor of a provisional government.

The U.S. Senate votes to limit filibusters by adopting the cloture rule.

1930: The 27th president of the United States, William Howard Taft, dies in Washington at age 72.

1944: Two days after an initial strike, U.S. heavy bombers resume raiding Berlin during World War II.

1965: The United States lands its first combat troops in South Vietnam as 3,500 Marines arrive to defend the U.S. air base at Da Nang.

1966: Nelson’s Pillar, a 120-foot-high column in Dublin honoring British naval hero Horatio Nelson, is bombed by the Irish Republican Army.

1979: Technology firm Philips demonstrates a prototype compact disc player during a press conference in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.

1983: In a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals convention in Orlando, Fla., President Ronald Reagan refers to the Soviet Union as an “evil empire.”

1986: Four French television crew members are abducted in west Beirut; a caller claims Islamic Jihad was responsible. (All four were eventually released.)

1996: The Coen Brothers’ black comedy “Fargo” is placed in limited release by Gramercy Pictures.

2006: Iran threatens the United States with “harm and pain” if the U.S. tries to use the U.N. Security Council to punish Tehran for its suspected nuclear program.

Six months after Hurricane Katrina, President George W. Bush gets a close-up look at the remaining mountains of debris, abandoned homes and boarded-up businesses in New Orleans.

2011: Voters in Bell, Calif., go to the polls in huge numbers and throw out the entire city council after most of its members had been charged with fraud. (Residents were infuriated to find out that former City Manager Robert Rizzo had been receiving an annual salary of $1.5 million, and that four of the five city council members had paid themselves $100,000 to meet about once a month.)

2014: Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, a Boeing 777 with 239 people on board, vanishes during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, setting off a massive search. (To date, the fate of the jetliner and its occupants has yet to be determined.)

2015: Thousands of people crowd the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama, many jammed shoulder to shoulder, to commemorate a bloody confrontation 50 years earlier between police and peaceful protesters that helped bring about the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

VINDICATOR FILES

1991: The House of Representatives blocks repeated attempts by U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant and others to reduce or eliminate a special Persian Gulf war-related aid package of $650 million to Israel.

Weirton Steel Corp., the nation’s largest employee-owned company with 8,000 workers, will lay off workers and eliminate management positions to battle a slump.

The Ohio Supreme Court refuses to hear an appeal by former Youngstown Mayor George Vukovich of an appeals court ruling that he was not entitled to $37,957 for unused sick leave and vacation time accrued while he was mayor. Law Director Edwin Romero says the city may seek reimbursement of $10,000 for vacation time Vukovich earned as clerk of courts but cashed in at his mayoral rate of pay.

1976: Austintown police arrest a 17-year-old Austintown youth after finding nine small fragmentation bombs in his basement. The bombs are similar to those used to blow open a locker at Fitch High School and to break a window at a Breezewood Drive home.

Ronald L. Kilpatrick, a Warren native, is named manager of the IBM processing division’s northeastern region headquartered in Waltham, Mass.

Eight students at Minter High School in Auglaize County are killed when a car rams into a caravan of students at a four-way stop near Maria Stein, Ohio.

1966: The Youngstown Board of Education approves an annual appropriation of $14.6 million, an increase of $302,000 over a year earlier.

Mahoning County Commissioner John Palermo asks local Welfare Department officials to explain why welfare rolls have increased by 380 at a time when unemployment is at a record low.

Hubbard Mayor Frank D. Washington says city businesses have 15 days to clear their racks of smutty magazines or face arrest.

1941: Two seventh-grade boys walking home from Hayes Junior High School, Albert Toperzer and Edmund Storey, are killed instantly when struck by a runaway stolen car. The car rammed a tree, also killing one of three boys in it, 13-year-old Joseph Sikora.

Local steel men are notified that the National Defense Commission will set maximum prices for scrap iron and steel that will be below current quotations.

Mrs. Eva Bonham hosts an Althea Class meeting at First Methodist Church. Heirlooms, some as old as 200 years, were displayed.