Today is Friday, May 9, the 130th day of 2008. There are 236 days left in the year. On this date in

Today is Friday, May 9, the 130th day of 2008. There are 236 days left in the year. On this date in 1754, a cartoon in Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette shows a snake cut into sections, each part representing an American colony; the caption reads, “JOIN, or DIE.”

In 1936, Italy annexes Ethiopia. In 1945, U.S. officials announce that a midnight entertainment curfew is being lifted immediately. In 1958, “Vertigo,” Alfred Hitchcock’s eerie thriller starring James Stewart and Kim Novak, premieres in San Francisco, the movie’s setting. In 1961, FCC chairman Newton N. Minow decries the majority of television programming as a “vast wasteland” in a speech to the National Association of Broadcasters. In 1974, the House Judiciary Committee opens public hearings on whether to recommend the impeachment of President Nixon. In 1978, the bullet-riddled body of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro, who’d been abducted by the Red Brigades, is found in an automobile in the center of Rome. In 1980, 35 people are killed when a freighter rams the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay in Florida, causing a 1,400-foot section to collapse.

May 9, 1983: After a quiet weekend at his ranch, President Ronald Reagan flies to Ashland, Ohio, to pay tribute to Rep. John Ashbrook, a conservative Republican member of the House who died while campaigning for the U.S. Senate in 1982.

Anthony Protopapa, administrative assistant to Sheriff James A. Traficant Jr., testifies that he recalls receiving an envelope from accountant Joseph Fortine Sr., but denies that he knew it contained money provided by racketeer Charles Carabbia.

May 9, 1968: A bomb blast damages the 1968 Cadillac Coupe de Ville of John J. Angelo, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 377, as it sat in a carport behind his apartment at 1427 Fifth Ave.

Dr. Earland I. Carlson, president of Westminster College, tells members of the Youngstown Rotary Club that students want more say in how colleges and universities operate, but that students are transient and can’t be entrusted with making decisions that have permanent consequences for educational institutions.

May 9, 1958: Work on the first section of the Lake-to-River Freeway that will extend from East Liverpool to Ashtabula is begun by the State Highway Department with surveying near East Liverpool.

It takes Youngstown police just seven minutes to corner and arrest a 20-year-old burglar who set off an alarm at the Avon Aluminum Co., 808 Tod Ave.

May 9, 1933: By a majority vote, Youngstown City Council places negotiations for a lower electricity rate in the hands of the board of control. Council President J.P. Colleran and Councilman Myron Williams, who had been conducting negotiations with Ohio Edison, strenuously object.

In anticipation of continuing better steel business, operators of steel plants in the Youngstown district are doing repair work on unused facilities.