YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

Today is Wednesday, March 30, the 90th day of 2016. There are 276 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1822: Florida becomes a United States territory.

1867: U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward reaches agreement with Russia to purchase the territory of Alaska for $7.2 million.

1870: The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits denying citizens the right to vote and hold office on the basis of race, is declared in effect by Secretary of State Hamilton Fish.

1909: The Queensboro Bridge, linking the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Queens, opens.

1923: The Cunard liner RMS Laconia becomes the first passenger ship to circle the globe as it arrives in New York.

1945: During World War II, the Soviet Union invades Austria with the goal of taking Vienna, which it accomplishes two weeks later.

1959: A narrowly divided U.S. Supreme Court, in Bartkus v. Illinois, rules that a conviction in state court after an acquittal in federal court for the same crime did not constitute double jeopardy.

1964: John Glenn withdraws from the Ohio race for the U.S. Senate because of injuries suffered in a fall.

1975: As the Vietnam War nears its end, Communist forces occupy the city of Da Nang.

1981: President Ronald Reagan is shot and seriously injured outside a Washington, D.C., hotel by John W. Hinckley Jr.; also wounded are White House press secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy and a District of Columbia police officer, Thomas Delahanty.

1986: Actor James Cagney dies at his farm in Stanfordville, N.Y., at age 86.

1991: Patricia Bowman of Jupiter, Fla., tells authorities she’d been raped hours earlier by William Kennedy Smith, the nephew of Sen. Edward Kennedy, at the family’s Palm Beach estate. (Smith was acquitted at trial.)

2002: Britain’s Queen Mother Elizabeth dies at Royal Lodge, Windsor, outside London; she was 101 years old.

2006: American reporter Jill Carroll, a freelancer for The Christian Science Monitor, is released after 82 days as a hostage in Iraq.

2011: A top Libyan official, Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa, defects to Britain, dealing a blow to leader Moammar Gadhafi.

Tilikum, the killer whale that had drowned trainer Dawn Brancheau in 2010 at SeaWorld in Orlando, Fla., resumes performing for the first time since the woman’s death.

2015: German officials confirm that Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz was once diagnosed with suicidal tendencies and received lengthy psychotherapy before receiving his pilot’s license; they believe Lubitz deliberately smashed his Airbus A320 into the French Alps, killing 150 people.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is convicted of unlawfully accepting money from a U.S. supporter in his retrial on corruption charges.

VINDICATOR FILES

1991: Robert Risbeck, president of the Damascus Area Historical Society, says the society is offering a $100 reward for information leading to the arrest of vandals who damaged 50 grave markers in the historic Damascus Cemetery.

Niles Councilman Frank Fuda, D-1st, says security forces at Eastwood Mall have become more visible and that gangs of unruly teenagers are not gathering as they had in the past.

Youngstown Mayor Patrick Ungaro says layoff notices have been sent to 25 city employees. Councilmen Lock Beachum and Darlene Rogers say they would rather see council aides laid off than safety forces, but there are no plans for such legislation. The aides, most of whom are the spouses of council members, are paid $17,350 a year.

1976: The FBI is seeking a masked gunman who took an undisclosed sum of cash from the Girard Federal Savings & Loan Association in the Liberty Plaza.

Youngstown Patrolmen Clarence Green and Don Skowron arrest a 23-year-old calmly eating his breakfast at the counter of Flo’s Restaurant, 2401 Glenwood Ave., at 3:30 a.m. They knew the restaurant wasn’t open at that hour and found a broken window at the rear of the building.

Management of Lykes-Youngstown Corp., parent of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., looks for a “significantly improved” second half of the year for its steel products, Chairman J. T. Lykes Jr. and President Frank A. Nemec tell shareholders.

1966: Ensign Gale Gordon of Stow is the first woman to fly solo in a Navy trainer. She is in the Navy Medical Corps and hopes to be designated an aviation psychologist.

Pilot Dale Rebassi and a flying student, George Campbell, both of Beaver County, Pa., escape injury when Rebassi belly-lands their twin-engine plane on a foam-coated runway at Youngstown Municipal Airport after the plane’s landing gear wouldn’t lower.

“UFO Fever” spreads from Michigan to the Mahoning Valley with numerous sitings reported of a mysterious red, white and blue object hovering over Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties.

1941: The Rt. Rev. James McFadden, auxiliary bishop of the Cleveland Diocese, will officiate at the dedication of St. Rose parish’s new $95,000 church in Girard.

Shenango Pottery of New Castle, Pa., the largest producer of hotel china in the nation, puts a new circular kiln into operation and has two more under construction.