YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

Today is Thursday, March 31, the 91st day of 2016. There are 275 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1889: French engineer Gustave Eiffel unfurls the French tricolor from atop the Eiffel Tower, officially marking its completion.

1923: The first U.S. dance marathon, taking place in New York City, ends with Alma Cummings, who had danced with six-consecutive male partners, setting a world record of 27 hours on her feet.

1933: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Emergency Conservation Work Act, which creates the Civilian Conservation Corps.

1943: “Oklahoma!,” the first musical play by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, opens on Broadway.

1949: Newfoundland (now called Newfoundland and Labrador) enter confederation as Canada’s 10th province.

1953: Stanley Kubrick’s first feature, a war drama titled “Fear and Desire,” premieres in New York.

1968: President Lyndon B. Johnson stuns the country by announcing during a televised address that he will not seek re-election.

1976: The New Jersey Supreme Court rules that Karen Ann Quinlan, a young woman in a persistent vegetative state, could be disconnected from her respirator. (Quinlan, who remained unconscious, died in 1985.)

1986: A crash of a Mexicana Airlines Boeing 727 in a remote mountainous region of Mexico kills 167 people.

1991: The Warsaw Pact is formally dissolved.

1993: Actor Brandon Lee, 28, is accidentally shot to death during the filming of a movie in Wilmington, N.C., when he was hit by a bullet fragment that had become lodged inside a prop gun.

1995: Mexican-American singer Selena Quintanilla-Perez, 23, is shot to death in Corpus Christi, Texas, by the founder of her fan club, Yolanda Saldivar, who is convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.

2005: Terri Schiavo, 41, dies at a hospice in Pinellas Park, Fla., 13 days after her feeding tube was removed in a wrenching right-to-die dispute.

2006: Auto-parts supplier Delphi Corp. unveils a broad restructuring plan that will cut 8,500 salaried jobs and shut or sell a third of its plants worldwide.

Seventy deaths are reported after three strong earthquakes strike western Iran.

2011: Moammar Gadhafi strikes a defiant stance after two high-profile defections from his regime, saying the Western leaders who have decimated his military with airstrikes should resign immediately – not him. (Gadhafi’s message was in the form of a scroll across the bottom of state TV as he remained out of sight.)

2015: Lawyers for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev rest their case in his federal death-penalty trial, a day after they began presenting testimony designed to show his late older brother, Tamerlan, was the mastermind of the 2013 terror attack.

VINDICATOR FILES

1991: Mill Creek Park is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its creation, which was spurred by Volney Rogers, a 43-year-old lawyer who was alarmed by plans to expand logging and to build a quarry along Mill Creek.

Barbara Rosier, a 1970 graduate of Badger High School, graduates from Youngstown State University with a bachelor of science degree in business and a perfect 4.0 average. Hers was the only perfect grade-point average among 779 students receiving degrees in the winter commencement.

Army Spc. Dale Ross of Farrell, Pa., back from the Persian Gulf War, describes a Scud missile attack on the military compound in Saudi Arabia on Feb. 25 in which he was injured, but in which no members of the 475th Quartermaster Group from Farrell were killed.

1976: A multimillion- dollar water-pumping plant to serve the Ravenna Army Ammunition Plant will be built at the West Branch Reservoir, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announces.

The mercury surges to 80 degrees at the National Weather Service office at the Youngstown Municipal Airport, setting a new record for the date.

About 75 supporters of the Palestine Liberation Organization march from Youngstown State University to Federal Plaza in an effort to gain U.S. support for the Palestinians in their dispute with Israel over settlements, political prisoners and curfews, harassment and oppression in occupied territories.

1966: Neither the Hubbard Expressway nor the Division Street connector with Interstate 80 and state Route 11 will be scheduled for construction for at least three years, the Ohio Department of Transportation announces.

Youngstown City Council outlaws pinball machines as nuisances, whether they are used for gambling or not.

Developers plan a multi-million dollar resort in Rock Creek near Jefferson in Ashtabula County. They’re banking on the Lake Erie-to-Ohio River canal to be built on a route right past the resort.

1941: Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. settles a three- year fight with the Steel Workers Organizing Committee by agreeing to pay $170,000 and rehire 266 men fired during the strike of 1937.

Ohio Bell plans an $800,000 addition to the “Randolph exchange” building at West Rayen Avenue and Phelps Street.

Vindicator columnist Esther Hamilton is honored by the Fraternal Order of Eagles as the “Humanitarian of the Year,” primarily for her work on the “Alias Santa Claus Show,” which benefits the poor.