YEARS AGO FOR MARCH 27

Today is Monday, March 27, the 86th day of 2017. There are 279 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1513: Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon sights present-day Florida.

1836: The first Mormon temple is dedicated in Kirtland, Ohio, by Joseph Smith Jr.

1942: During World War II, Congress grants American servicemen free first-class mailing privileges.

1952: The MGM movie musical “Singin’ in the Rain,” starring Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor and Debbie Reynolds, has its world premiere at New York’s Radio City Music Hall.

1977: In aviation’s worst disaster, 583 people are killed when a KLM Boeing 747, attempting to take off in heavy fog, crashes into a Pan Am 747 on an airport runway on the Canary Island of Tenerife.

2002: President George W. Bush signs landmark bipartisan legislation designed to limit the role of big money in political campaigns.

2007: NFL owners vote 30-2 (with Cincinnati and Arizona dissenting) to make the video replay system a permanent officiating tool.

2016: A bombing in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore kills 65 people in a park crowded with Christians, including many children; a breakaway faction of the Taliban claims responsibility.

VINDICATOR FILES

1992: Trumbull County Sheriff Richard A. Jakmas responds to a request from the judge in boxer Mike Tyson’s rape trial describing Tyson, who has a home in Southington Township, as having “a good reputation” as a Trumbull County resident.

Workers from the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan will be coming to the New Castle Battery Manufacturing Co. to learn how to build auto batteries from the Pennsylvania company.

The 34-acre site of Shenango Pottery Co. near New Castle, Pa., goes on the auction block. The company already has sold thousands of dollars worth of kilns, tools and other equipment.

1977: The Western Reserve Transit Authority has a cash-flow problem so severe that it must borrow $200,000 until the federal government comes through with its 1977 operating assistance grant.

General Motors Corp. confirms that it will drop its Lordstown-produced Chevrolet Vega from its lineup at the end of the model year; the Chevrolet Monza and Pontiac Sunbird have been added to the 1978 production schedule at Lordstown.

Lordstown is preparing to open the Gordon James Career Center in the fall, providing vocational education to a consortium of Lordstown, Niles, McDonald, Howland and Weathersfield school districts.

1967: The education committee of the Ohio House of Representatives visits the Youngstown University campus before voting on whether to make it a state university.

Warren police are investigating the stabbing of a 3-year-old Craig Street boy by an 8-year-old girl playmate who was armed with a small knife.

Douglas A. McFalls, 19, of McDonald a Vietnam veteran, is struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver in Kentucky.

1942: A group of soldiers-to-be receive candy and cigarettes from the Junior Crafts of Warren as they leave Warren for Camp Perry. They receive a fanfare from the Harding High Band.

Youngstown Patrolmen Nick Linderman and John Manning deliver a baby daughter to Mrs. Neil Fletcher after being called to her Shaw Avenue home by a neighbor.

Four Youngstown men, 19 and 20 years old, confess to the fatal shooting of James M. Supplee, a night clerk at a Sharpsville trucking company, during a robbery.

Louis Carkido, Rollin Horne, Pete Misto and Shed Bell take home trophies from the Knights of Columbus boxing championships. A crowd of 2,300 fight fans filled the Rayen-Wood Auditorium.