YEARS AGO FOR MARCH 13

Today is Wednesday, March 13, the 72nd day of 2019. There are 293 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1764: Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, who would serve as British Prime Minister from 1830 to 1834 (and for whom Earl Grey tea is named), is born in Falloden, Northumberland.

1865: Confederate President Jefferson Davis signs a measure allowing black slaves to enlist in the Confederate States Army with the promise they would be set free.

1925: The Tennessee General Assembly approves a bill prohibiting the teaching of the theory of evolution.

1954: The Battle of Dien Bien Phu begins during the First Indochina War as Viet Minh forces attack French troops, who were defeated nearly two months later.

1934: A gang that included John Dillinger and “Baby Face” Nelson robs the First National Bank in Mason City, Iowa, making off with $52,344.

1975: The first Chili’s restaurant opens in Dallas.

1980: Ford Motor Co. Chairman Henry Ford II announces he is stepping down, the same day a jury in Winamac, Ind., finds the company not guilty of reckless homicide in the fiery deaths of three young women in a Ford Pinto.

2014: Seeking to pacify frustrated immigration advocates, President Barack Obama directs the government to find more humane ways to handle deportation for immigrants in the U.S. illegally.

2018: President Donald Trump abruptly dumps Secretary of State Rex Tillerson – via Twitter – and moves CIA Director Mike Pompeo from the role of America’s spy chief to its top diplomat.

VINDICATOR FILES

1994: A 47-year old Youngstown man who was wanted for the murder of his wife, walks out of a Pittsburgh hospital a free man after Youngstown police rescinded a fugitive warrant so the city wouldn’t be responsible for the man’s hospital bill.

Robert Armstrong, grand dragon of the Unified Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, says today’s Klansman is a law-abiding political activist, not a hate-mongering bully.

Mayor Patrick J. Ungaro pledges to see the rehabilitation of the Higbee department store building in downtown Youngstown as a state and city office building.

1979: The Ohio Senate Finance Committee votes to recommend that the full Senate approve a $10 million grant to the Ecumenical Coalition of the Mahoning Valley to help reopen the Jones & Laughlin Campbell Works (formerly Youngstown Sheet & Tube).

David Swansiger, a senior ROTC cadet at Youngstown State University, receives the George C. Marshall award, given annually to the outstanding senior student at each of the 275 colleges with an ROTC program.

The Most Rev. William C. Hughes, auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Youngstown since 1974, is named bishop of the Diocese of Covington, Ky., by Pope John Paul II.

1969: The Youngstown Rotary Club will studywhether to establish a Boys Club of America on the lower South Side.

About a dozen employees escape without injury when fire breaks out at the Bort Meat Packing Co. plant on South Range Road, Beaver Township.

The Youngstown Automobile Club is pushing the city to sell an East Front Street urban renewal site to the club for a new headquarters.

1944: Dr. Charles Wheeler Iglehart, a Methodist missionary in Japan for 35 years, tells 100 members of the Youngstown Ministerial Association that atrocities attributed to the Japanese should be viewed as happening in the heat of battle and against a backdrop of “450 years of fear of the white man.”

Willard Hartman , a 50-year-old father of seven and shipper at Buddie’s Furniture Co. on East Federal Street is found dead in the bottom of a freight elevator shaft at the store.