Today in history

Today is Thursday, May 7, the 127th day of 2009. There are 238 days left in the year. On this date in 1915, nearly 1,200 people die when a German torpedo sinks the British liner RMS Lusitania off the Irish coast.

In 1789, the first inaugural ball is held in New York in honor of President George Washington and his wife, Martha. In 1833, composer Johannes Brahms is born in Hamburg, Germany. In 1840, composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky is born in Votkinsk, Russia. In 1909, Edwin H. Land, inventor of polarizing filters and Polaroid instant photography, is born in Bridgeport, Conn. In 1945, Germany signs an unconditional surrender at Allied headquarters in Rheims, France. In 1954, the 55-day Battle of Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam ends with Vietnamese insurgents overrunning French forces. In 1960, Leonid Brezhnev replaces Marshal Kliment Voroshilov as president of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. In 1975, President Gerald R. Ford formally declares an end to the “Vietnam era.” In Ho Chi Minh City — formerly Saigon — the Viet Cong celebrate its takeover.

May 7, 1984: Democratic Presidential Candidate Jesse Jackson, appearing at Stambaugh Auditorium, says his day in Youngstown has been “the happiest day — the most fulfilling day — of the entire campaign.”

On a campaign swing through the Mahoning Valley, Democratic Presidential Candidate Walter F. Mondale says one way of fulfilling his commitment to the area would be to channel defense contracts to the Valley.

Twelve patrons who were inside Mr. C’s Lounge in New Middletown when two deputies ran amok file a $3.7 million lawsuit against Mahoning County Sheriff James A. Traficant Jr., two deputies and four supervisors.

May 7, 1969: Youngstown voters approve a 12-mill levy that was vital to the financial wellbeing of the Youngstown City School District by a 7,000-vote margin, assuring the future public education of the city’s 27,000 pupils.

Marine Pfc. Edward A. Horn Jr., 20, of Poland, twice wounded in Vietnam since August, is killed by enemy rifle fire while on patrol. He is Mahoning County’s 69th combat fatality of the war.

Mayor Anthony B. Flask receives 18,080 votes in the Democratic primary, leading a field of four candidates. He will be challenged in November by Republican Jack C. Hunter, who received 6,835 votes as the only Republican in the mayoral primary.

May 7, 1959: Harvell Manu–facturing Co., one of the Youngs–town district’s postwar industries, will close its Hubbard plant and farm out the manufacturing of its household wares, affecting about 200 employees, 60 percent of them women.

Lack of sanitary sewer connections is holding up the construction of the Frank L. Ohl Junior High School in Idaho Road in Austintown Township.

Campbell City Auditor Paul P. Zuzik fires his deputy auditor, Pauline Clement, on grounds of disloyalty; Miss Clement defeated Zuzik for the Democratic nomination for city auditor.

May 7, 1934: After 15 years of extensive research by the best of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co.’s engineers for a more perfect type of thread on couplings and pipes for deep oil well drilling, a matched thread system has been perfected. With old methods, threads on couplings and pipes weakened at depths of 21‚Ñ2 miles.

Jonathan Warner, president of the Trumbull Steel Co. until its financial difficulties in 1925, dies in Philadelphia after a few days illness. He leaves his wife, the former Elizabeth Field, first cousin of Cyrus West Field, who laid the first Atlantic cable.

Adj. Gen. Frank D. Henderson, state relief chairman, says transients will be given board and lodging at $1 a week in return for work at 10 labor camps, including one at the Meander Reservoir and one at the East Liverpool Airport.