YEARS AGO FOR MARCH 11

Today is Monday, March 11, the 70th day of 2019. There are 295 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1513: Giovanni de’ Medici is proclaimed pope, succeeding Julius II; he takes the name Leo X.

1888: The Blizzard of ’88, also known as the “Great White Hurricane,” begins inundating the northeastern United States, resulting in some 400 deaths.

1918: What are believed to be the first confirmed U.S. cases of a deadly global flu pandemic are reported among U.S. Army soldiers stationed at Fort Riley, Kan.; 46 would die.

1959: The Lorraine Hansberry drama “A Raisin in the Sun” opens at New York’s Ethel Barrymore Theater.

2003: A U.S. Army helicopter crashes near Fort Drum in upstate New York, killing 11 soldiers.

2011: Amagnitude-9.0 earthquake and resulting tsunami strikes Japan’s northeastern coast, killing nearly 20,000 people and severely damaging the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station.

2018: The White House pledges to help states pay for firearms training for teachers, and renews its call for an improved background check system, as part of a new plan to prevent school shootings.

VINDICATOR FILES

1994: Bulletproof vests are credited with saving Warren Patrolman Gary Riggins and Lordstown Patrolman Richard J. Siegal Jr. from injury or death when a drug raid on Oak Street in Warren turns into a gunfight. Two suspects were wounded and are under police guard in Trumbull Memorial Hospital.

Youngstown City Council approves loan guarantees of up to $350,000 to support development of Mr. Anthony’s on the River in the former St. Vincent de Paul building at Oak Hill and Mahoning avenues.

Mayor Patrick Ungaro says the city has agreed to financially support construction of a minor league baseball stadium in cooperation with Mahoning County.

1979: More than 38,000 students in Ohio have defaulted on $35 million worth of federal financial-aid loans; at Youngstown State University the default rate is 11.9 percent, lower than the state average, with 632 students failing to pay back $268,824.

Five of 18 finalists from Ohio in the American Legion’s Americanism and Government Test are from the Youngstown district: Mike Greco, Carol Fedorchak, Ingebor Hrabowy, Jeffrey Rade and Terri McDougal.

A deputy attorney general for Pennsylvania rules that 50 senior citizens in the Mercer County Area Agency on Aging program at the Jamestown Fire Hall can have a Bible study program as long as it is done in a nonsectarian manner and no one is forced directly or indirectly to participate.

1969: Two Mahoning Avenue women are robbed by two men, one dressed as a woman. Rose Frain answered the door and a woman asked to speak to her sister, Mrs. Leon Koch. He then revealed himself to be a man and he and his companion tied the women up and stole an undetermined amount of money

Rose Woodrum, district manager of the Youngstown Social Security office, is named deputy director of registration operations for Social Security in Baltimore.

Army Spec. 4 Walter Bruce Hoxworth, Struthers, dies in combat in Vietnam in an aircraft landing zone. He had two Purple Hearts and the Air Medal.

1944: The aerial feats of 1st Lt. George R. Gibson of Salem, who has seen action with the 84th bomber squadron in Africa, Italy and Sicily, has attracted the attention of three columnists: H.R. Knickerbocker, Walter Winchell and Ernie Pyle.

A group of as many as 30 boys armed with BB guns play war games in the lower ravine of Crandall Park. The loss of an eye by one of the boys, James Freckelton, 12, causes Juvenile Court Judge Henry Beckenbach to warn that any person selling or giving a firearm of any kind to a minor faces a fine of $100 and as many as 30 days in jail.