Years Ago

Today is Friday, May 17, the 137th day of 2013. There are 228 days left in the year.

Associated Press

On this date in:

1792: The New York Stock Exchange has its origins as a group of brokers meet under a tree on Wall Street.

1849: Fire erupts in St. Louis, Mo., resulting in the loss of three lives, more than 400 buildings and two dozen steamships.

1933: U.S. News & World Report has its beginnings as David Lawrence begins publishing a weekly newspaper called United States News.

1946: President Harry S. Truman seizes control of the nation’s railroads, delaying — but not preventing — a strike by engineers and trainmen.

1954: The U.S. Supreme Court, in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, unanimously strikes down racially segregated public schools.

1973: A special committee convenes by the U.S. Senate begins its televised hearings into the Watergate scandal.

1987: 37 American sailors are killed when an Iraqi warplane attacks the U.S. Navy frigate Stark in the Persian Gulf. (Iraq apologized for the attack, calling it a mistake, and paid more than $27 million in compensation.)

Vindicator files

1988: The Niles Board of Education yields to public protests and says it will maintain extracurricular activities in the coming year, despite a shaky financial future.

A newborn baby boy discovered abandoned in a toilet at Waddell Park in Niles is reported in stable condition at Tod Children’s Hospital.

Trumbull County Common Pleas Judge W. Wyatt McKay and Mahoning County Common Pleas Judge Charles J. Bannon rule that the Mahoning Valley Sanitary District water rates will remain unchanged until June 1989.

Youngstown city officials say they’ll enter “serious negotiations” to buy the Republic Steel Corp. property under the Market Street Bridge and the former Higbee building.

1973: The Gelbke brothers, Herman and Henry, continue to breed prize-winning cows at their 116-acre dairy farm in Vienna Township; they’re slowing down because dairy farming is “a young man’s game.”

The Boardman Board of Education accepts an impasse committee’s recommendation for a starting teacher salary of $7,100 in 1973, but balks at an increase to $7,450 in 1974.

1963: Warren police use tear gas to flush George Ihlenfeld, 33, from his mother-in-law’s house on Elm Road SE after he killed his wife, Jen, 28, and wounded his mother-in-law and father.

Gov. James A. Rhodes, Rep. Michael J. Kirwan and Raymond J. Wean, president of Wean Engineering Co., will receive honorary degrees at the 41st annual commencement of Youngstown University.

Cardinal Mooney High School’s Patricia Bartolo is the only Youngstown area high school pupil to win first place honors in the District State Scholarship tests. She scored 131 out of a possible 150 in English XII.

1938: The Youngstown Board of Education authorizes Supt. Pliny H. Powers to go ahead with plans for a new vocational high school, three new elementary school buildings, a junior high school and other improvements in a $3 million building and repair program.

Four marble kings are crowned, each for a different section of Youngstown: Vincent Altier, 14; Calvin Jones, 13; George Snyder, 13, and Andrew Sanetrick, 12.