YEARS AGO

Today is Sunday, March 12, the 71st day of 2017. There are 294 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1857: The original version of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Simon Boccanegra” is poorly received at its premiere in Venice, Italy. (Verdi offered a revised version in 1881.)

1912: The Girl Scouts of the USA has its beginnings as Juliette Gordon Low of Savannah, Ga., founded the first American troop of the Girl Guides.

1925: Chinese revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen dies.

1933: President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivers the first of his 30 radio addresses that came to be known as “fireside chats,” telling Americans what was being done to deal with the nation’s economic crisis.

1938: The Anschluss merging Austria with Nazi Germany takes place as German forces cross the border between the two countries.

1940: Finland and the Soviet Union conclude an armistice during World War II. (Fighting between the two countries flared again the following year.)

1947: President Harry S. Truman announces what would become known as the “Truman Doctrine” to help Greece and Turkey resist Communism.

1951: “Dennis the Menace,” created by cartoonist Hank Ketcham, makes its syndicated debut in 16 newspapers.

1967: Gen. Suharto becomes acting president of Indonesia, replacing President Sukarno.

1971: Hafez Assad is confirmed as president of Syria in a referendum.

1980: A Chicago jury finds John Wayne Gacy Jr. guilty of the murders of 33 men and boys. (The next day, Gacy was sentenced to death; he was executed in May 1994.)

1993: Janet Reno is sworn in as the first female U.S. attorney general.

A three-day blizzard that came to be known as “The Storm of the Century” begins inundating the eastern third of the U.S.

A series of bombings in Mumbai, India, kills 257 people (the explosions were allegedly masterminded by India’s most wanted man, Dawood Ibrahim).

2003: Elizabeth Smart, the 15-year-old girl who vanished from her bedroom nine months earlier, is found alive in a Salt Lake City suburb with two drifters, Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee.

2007: President George W. Bush promotes free trade as a salve to Latin America’s woes as he speaks out against poverty during a visit to Guatemala.

2016: Ted Cruz wins most of the delegates at stake in Republican county conventions in Wyoming; Marco Rubio wins the GOP presidential caucuses in Washington, D.C.

VINDICATOR FILES

1992: Niles Board of Education member Don Pallante warns fellow board members that Superintendent John Bruno’s proposal to cluster elementary schools by grade rather than neighborhood could produce a backlash that would bring the defeat of school levies at the polls.

A Trumbull County jury convicts Roderick Davie of aggravated murder, kidnapping and robbery in an attack at Veterinary Company of America in Warren that left two dead and one wounded.

Western Auto Parts Inc. is adding a new store in Boardman and has announced plans to also build new stores in Liberty, Niles and Austintown.

1977: Richmond Smith, 81-year-old farmer, dies when his clothes catch fire while trying to fight a grass fire on Unity Road in New Middletown.

Hermitage moves one step closer to getting its own post office when the U.S. Postal Service agrees to allow all Hermitage residents with Sharon mailing addresses to send and receive mail addressed to Hermitage, Pa.

Lloyd E. Brauninger, 48, of 4738 Logan Way, a pioneer in strip mining, retired contractor and gentleman farmer, dies at his home, where he raised prize Arabian horses and maintained a wildlife refuge.

1967: The financial report for the year ending Dec. 31, 1966, shows the Boardman Local School District spent $4.2 million for the year.

Martin Essex, Ohio superintendent of schools, recommends that Mahoning County receives $3.3 million toward construction of a vocational school.

Lt. Michael J. Joyce, son of Mr. and Mrs. William F. Joyce of Youngstown, arrives home for a leave after flying 80 missions over Vietnam.

A column written by Erma Bombeck, a housewife from the city of Dayton, begins appearing in The Vindicator.

1942: Anthony J. Pastual, the Youngstown flier who spent 34 days on a raft in the Pacific, tells how he and two others stabbed a shark with pocket knives and ate the fish to stay alive.

The cost of fire protection in Youngstown in 1951 was $372,594, which is about $2.20 per resident.

Vern J. Wilson, president of Union National Bank and the Youngstown Chamber of Commerce, urges Youngstown voters to approve a 1.187-mill levy that would enable the city to provide public- safety resources necessary to civil defense.

Sites for 3,650 defense housing units that will cost $9 million will be announced soon in the Warren-Ravenna area.