YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

Today is Wednesday, March 16, the 76th day of 2016. There are 290 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1751: James Madison, fourth president of the United States, is born in Port Conway, Va.

1802: President Thomas Jefferson signs a measure authorizing the establishment of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.

1850: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel “The Scarlet Letter” is first published.

1935: Adolf Hitler decides to break the military terms set by the Treaty of Versailles by ordering the rearming of Germany.

1945: During World War II, American forces declare they had secured Iwo Jima, although pockets of Japanese resistance remained.

1968: During the Vietnam War, the My Lai Massacre of Vietnamese civilians is carried out by U.S. Army troops; estimates of the death toll vary between 347 and 504.

1974: The new Grand Ole Opry House opens in Nashville with a concert attended by President Richard Nixon and his wife, Pat.

1984: William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut, is kidnapped by Hezbollah militants (he was tortured by his captors and killed in 1985).

1985: Terry Anderson, chief Middle East correspondent for The Associated Press, is abducted in Beirut; he was released in December 1991.

2003: American activist Rachel Corrie, 23, is crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer while trying to block demolition of a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip.

2011: Pakistan abruptly frees CIA contractor Raymond Allen Davis, who had shot and killed two men in a gunfight in Lahore, after a deal was reached to pay $2.34 million to the men’s families.

2015: Los Angeles prosecutors file a first-degree murder charge against real-estate heir Robert Durst in the killing of his friend, Susan Berman, who had acted as Durst’s spokeswoman after his wife, Kathleen, disappeared in 1982.

VINDICATOR FILES

1991: Ohio Bell Telephone Co. advises Mahoning County residents to ignore a flier included with phone bills explaining how to use the 911 emergency calling system because Mahoning County does not have 911 service.

Police officer Robert Fabrey, who was portrayed as a hero in the TV show “Top Cop,” sues the village of McDonald, seeking in excess of $25,000 alleging that the village’s negligence made it necessary for him to enter a smoke-filled cell to save an inmate during a fire at the jail. McDonald police chief James Tyree suggests that the suit is based more on the TV re-enactment of the drama than on what happened.

1976: The Ohio Department of Economic and Community Development recertifies Youngstown as an impacted city, permitting real-estate tax relief for commercial and industrial development in blighted areas.

The iron and steel industry must eliminate uncontrolled discharge of oil and grease into the nation’s rivers and lakes, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announces.

Trumbull County receives a state grant of $53,730 for implementation of a development program for county courts, and Mahoning County receives $14,167 for an investigator for county courts.

1966: The Youngstown and Warren human- relations commissions will meet with General Motors Corp. officials to discuss hiring practices at the Lordstown plant.

Trustees of the Mahoning County Community College district suggest talks with Youngstown University officials to discuss cooperative efforts to meet the educational needs of the area.

Private investors plan to build a $500,000 dormitory to house 212 coeds in a building on Lincoln Avenue between Elm Street and Fifth Avenue.

1941: A group of Ravenna food retailers votes to proceed toward implementing the federal food-stamp program in Portage County.

A story from Washington, D.C., reports that Dr. W.W. Coblentz, a Mahoning County native, has become “one of the world’s most-eminent physicists” and possibly the most- knowledgeable man in the world on the measurement of ultraviolet radiation.

Six slot machines are looted while in storage at the Mercer County Courthouse evidence room. The amount of money taken is unknown.