YEARS AGO FOR MARCH 20

Today is Monday, March 20, the 79th day of 2017. There are 286 days left in the year. Spring arrives at 6:28 a.m. Eastern time.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1727: Physicist, mathematician and astronomer Sir Isaac Newton dies in London.

1815: Napoleon Bonaparte returns to Paris after escaping his exile on Elba, beginning his “Hundred Days” rule.

1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s influential novel about slavery, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” is first published in book form after being serialized.

1933: Florida electrocutes Giuseppe Zangara for shooting to death Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak at a Miami event attended by President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, the presumed target, the previous February.

1942: U.S. Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur, having evacuated the Philippines at the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, tells reporters at a train station in Terowie, Australia: “I came out of Bataan, and I shall return.”

1969: John Lennon marries Yoko Ono in Gibraltar.

1996: A jury in Los Angeles convicts Erik and Lyle Menendez of first-degree murder in the shotgun slayings of their wealthy parents. (They were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.)

2012: Front-runner Mitt Romney wins the Illinois Republican primary with ease, routing Rick Santorum for his third big-state win in a row.

2016: President Barack Obama opens a historic visit to Cuba, eager to push decades of acrimony deeper into the past.

VINDICATOR FILES

1992: Reid Dulberger, executive director of the Regional Growth Alliance, says area business and political leaders will meet to discuss how the area can bid for a Pentagon accounting complex that would employ up to 7,000 people.

Parkview Counseling Center begins its move from its Covington Street quarters to unused space in the Woodside Receiving Hospital.

Brentwood Originals Inc., which sold its former plant in Boardman to Modern Builders Supply Inc. in January, reports business has picked up at its Salt Springs Road plant, which employs more than 300.

1977: J. Phillip Richley, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for mayor of Youngstown, says that if he is elected mayor in 1977, he would not run for Congress in 1978.

About 200 whistling swans on their northward migration stop for a rest on Lake Wilako off Western Reserve Road.

Youngstown State University hosts the NCAA Division II Swimming and Diving Championship and three Penguins join the ranks of All-Americans: diver Joe Kemper; Paul Lonneman, 200-yard backstroker; and Doug Shilliday, who swam the 200-yard butterfly.

1967: Marine Pfc. Danny E. Nicklow, 20, of Friendsville, Md., a former Youngstown University student, is killed during the Communist attack on Da Nang Air Base in Vietnam.

Youngstown’s Easter egg hunt is canceled because of cold weather. The mercury drops to 3 degrees at the Youngstown Municipal Airport.

Burglars break through a wall to gain entry to the Ideal Department Store in Niles. They steal $250 from the safe and 200 cartons of cigarettes.

New Castle City Council approves hiring five firemen to bring the department to its full complement of 56 men.

1942: Expanded war production is bringing people to Warren. The city population is expected to increase by an estimated 15,000 people in 1942.

Ohio Gov. John W. Bricker cancels the 92nd annual Ohio State Fair and turns the fairgrounds over to the War Department for storage of airplane parts.

Four hundred striking members of the SWOC Union 2347 end an outlaw strike at the Niles Steel Products plant of the Republic Steel Corp, which is involved in war production.

Michael McCullion, 54, a World War I hero and active Hibernian, dies of a heart ailment at his Wood Street home in Youngstown.