YEARS AGO FOR MARCH 31

Today is Friday, March 31, the 90th day of 2017. 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.

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

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.)

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

VINDICATOR FILES

1992: U.S Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. and area businessman J.J. Cafaro are proposing a joint property tax for Mahoning and Trumbull counties that would be used to raise $10 million to $12 million to build a facility for a Pentagon finance center that would create 7,000 jobs.

The Ohio Auditor’s office issues a finding for recovery of $57,078 against the project manager for the restoration of the Mahoning County Courthouse.

Mayor Patrick J. Ungaro says he will ask Law Director Edwin Romero to petition the Mahoning Valley Sanitary District’s Court of Jurisdiction to remove Atty. Edward Flask from the MVSD’s board.

1977: High winds destroy a mobile home at the Lordstown Estates Mobile Home Park and tear the roof off 10 units at the Pembrooke Place Apartments in Austintown.

The Youngstown Park and Recreation Commission’s annual Easter Egg Hunt is postponed for a day because of wet grounds and high winds at Wick Park.

R. Thornton Beeghly, president of Standard Slag Co. of Youngstown, says the firm will expand and diversify into energy and housing fields.

1967: Residential facilities to serve the retarded in Mahoning and Trumbull counties are among the objectives contained in a state plan for the region.

Navy Lt. James P. Borsic, 27, a 1958 Ursuline graduate, is killed in a helicopter crash during flight operations from the U.S. Navy carrier Essex in the Atlantic Ocean off Quonset Point.

The last segments of the Lake Erie-to-Ohio River highway, state Route 11, will be under construction within two years, says P.E. Masheter, state highway director.

The Rev. David Bowman of Washington, D.C., the first Catholic elected to the executive staff of the National Council of Churches, will be the speaker at Niles’ first interfaith dinner.

1942: Margaret Elizabeth Pabst of Volney Road, Youngstown, received Wittenberg College’s highest honor, the Alma Mater Award.

Youngstown Police Chief John Turnbull warns that motorists driving on expired 1941 license plates will be arrested.

Leo Kurfis, Cleveland department commander of the VFW, tells a group of veterans in Youngstown that first lady Eleanor Roosevelt has insulted World War I veterans by implying that if they had done more, the country would not be at war again.

Youngstown’s 900 public-school teachers will be evaluated and those found below par will come under special attention from their supervisors. The plan is to avoid a repeat of 1941, when 29 teachers were not rehired.