YEARS AGO FOR MARCH 20

Today is Wednesday, March 20, the 79th day of 2019. There are 286 days left in the year. Spring arrives at 5:58 p.m. Eastern time.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1760: A 10-hour fire erupts in Boston, destroying 349 buildings and burning 10 ships, but claiming no lives.

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

1854: The Republican Party of the United States is founded by slavery opponents at a schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisin.

1969: John Lennon marries Yoko Ono in Gibraltar.

1990: Singer Gloria Estefan suffers a broken back when a truck rear-ends her tour bus on a snow-covered highway in Pennsylvania.

1995: In Tokyo, 12 people are killed, more than 5,500 others sickened when packages containing the deadly chemical sarin are leaked on five subway trains by Aum Shinrikyo cult members.

2004: Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide rally against the U.S.-led war in Iraq on the first anniversary of the start of the conflict.

2018: Investigators pursuing a suspected serial bombing in Austin, Texas, shift attention to a FedEx shipping center near San Antonio, where a package had exploded.

VINDICATOR FILES

1994: Sharon Steel Corp. says it has paid half of the $77 million its secured lenders were owed when the company filed for bankruptcy in November 1992.

Army Col. Charles W. Scott, who lived in Youngstown for two years while in the reserves after the Korean War, is the Junior League of Youngstown’s Town Hall lecturer. He described his torture and detention over 444 days after radicals stormed the American embassy in Tehran, Iran.

Coach John Diehl’s Bristol High boys basketball team earns a berth in the state tournament by beating Lorain Clearview, 56-53, in the Division IV regional final in Canton. Ursuline earns a berth in Division III, beating Cardinal Mooney, 69-52.

1979: The Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. grants the Community Improvement Corp. of CASTLO exclusive right to buy or arrange the sale of the Struthers Works of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. at a price of $1.8 million.

Salem Schools Superintendent Robert Pond says a pattern of abuse has developed around the one-week spring break with hundreds of high-school students taking off additional days before the beginning of spring break and often not returning to class the week after the break. The Friday before the break, 153 seniors, more than half the class, were absent.

Ohio Edison Co. loses the last round of a seven-year fight to overturn government-ordered pollution clean-up at the company’s 12 coal-fired power plants.

1969: Youngstown Law Director Patrick J. Melillo proposes that Ohio’s major cities institute a referendum to repeal the state law that took police and fire pension funds away from the city.

A 31-year-old mother of five who admitted defrauding the Mahoning County Welfare Department of $5,500 over six years is sent by Judge Sidney Rigelhaupt to Marysville Reformatory for an indefinite term.

Campbell is instructed to have plans for a secondary sewage treatment plant submitted to Ohio Board of Health by Dec. 31, 1970. The state permit to dump sewage in the Mahoning River has been renewed for a year.

1944: Youngstown’s three hospitals would handle all contagious disease cases requiring hospitalization, while the venereal disease clinic would be operated in the city building at Watt and Wood streets under a plan recommended by Dr. Robert Mosssman, city health commissioner.

Marian Anderson, celebrated singer who has appeared before audiences of 3 million in 325 cities, will appear April 29 in Stambaugh Auditorium under the auspices of the Monday Musical Club.