Today is Sunday, May 4, the 125th day of 2008. There are 241 days left in the year. On this date in

Today is Sunday, May 4, the 125th day of 2008. There are 241 days left in the year. On this date in 1945, during World War II, German forces in the Netherlands, Denmark and northwest Germany agree to surrender.

In 1626, Dutch explorer Peter Minuit lands on present-day Manhattan Island. In 1886, at Haymarket Square in Chicago, a labor demonstration for an eight-hour work day turns into a riot when a bomb explodes. In 1904, the United States takes over construction of the Panama Canal. In 1916, responding to a demand from President Wilson, Germany agrees to limit its submarine warfare, thereby averting a diplomatic break with Washington. (However, Germany resumes unrestricted submarine warfare the following year.) In 1932, mobster Al Capone, convicted of income-tax evasion, enters the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. (Capone is later transferred to Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay.) In 1946, a two-day riot at Alcatraz prison in San Francisco Bay ends, the violence having claimed five lives. In 1961, a group of “Freedom Riders” leaves Washington, D.C., for New Orleans to challenge racial segregation on interstate buses and in bus terminals. In 1970, Ohio National Guardsmen open fire on anti-war protesters at Kent State University, killing four students and wounding nine others. In 1979, Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher becomes Britain’s first female prime minister as the Tories oust the incumbent Labour government in parliamentary elections. In 2001, Bonny Lee Bakley, wife of actor Robert Blake, is shot to death as she sits in a car in Los Angeles. (Blake, accused of the killing, is acquitted in a criminal trial but is found liable by a civil jury and ordered to pay damages.)

May 4, 1983: Judge Ann Aldrich admonishes news reporters covering the trial of Sheriff James A. Traficant Jr. not to talk to jurors and not to discuss the trial among themselves within earshot of the jurors.

The Food Assistance Warehouse on Hylda Avenue is tapped by the government as a regional distribution center for rice, corn meal and dried milk.

A private guard is charged with felonious assault for wounding an alleged shoplifter outside Hills department store in the Lincoln Knolls Plaza.

May 4, 1968: The Hotel Ohio signs a lease with the Youngstown Metropolitan Housing Authority to accept up to 60 tenants being displaced by the downtown Urban Renewal programs.

Andrea Wayda, 14, an 8th grader at St. John the Baptist School in Campbell, wins The Vindicator’s 35th annual Spelling Bee at South High Field House.

Julian Bond, Negro member of the Georgia Legislature, tells 400 people at the annual dinner-dance of the Youngstown Chapter of the Negro Business and Professional Women’s Club that “Negro gains so far have failed to improve measurably the lot of the average black man.”

May 4, 1958: Shopping center developer Edward J. DeBartolo announces that he will build a $4 million shopping center in Austintown on Route 18.

Officials of Bethlehem Steel Corp. and Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. say there isn’t enough money to be made in the steel industry to tempt anyone to build a new steel plant at today’s high prices.

Tim Tam thunders down the muddy stretch at Churchill Downs to beat Lincoln Road by half a length in the 84th running of the Kentucky Derby in a comparatively slow time of 2:05.

May 4, 1933: Leonard T. Skeggs, executive secretary of the Youngstown YMCA since 1919, dies in Tampa Municipal Hospital of complications from a gunshot wound.

Byron W. Stewart, superintendent of the Youngstown Hospital Association, is installed as president of the Ohio Hospital Association.

The Palace Theater will close for the summer during which the playhouse will be renovated before reopening in the fall.