Today in history

May 16, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

Today is Saturday, May 16, the 136th day of 2009. There are 229 days left in the year. On this date in 1929, the first Academy Awards are presented during a banquet at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. The movie “Wings” wins “best production,” while Emil Jannings and Janet Gaynor are named best actor and best actress.

In 1770, Marie Antoinette, age 14, marries the future King Louis XVI of France, who is 15. In 1866, Congress authorizes minting of the first 5-cent piece, also known as the “Shield nickel.” In 1868, the Senate fails by one vote to convict President Andrew Johnson as it takes its first ballot on the 11 articles of impeachment against him. In 1920, Joan of Arc is canonized by Pope Benedict XV. In 1939, the government begins its first food stamp program in Rochester, N.Y. In 1948, CBS News correspondent George Polk, who’d been covering the Greek civil war between Communist and nationalist forces, is found slain in Solonica Harbor. In 1960, a Big Four summit conference in Paris collapses on its opening day as the Soviet Union levels spy charges against the U.S. in the wake of the U-2 incident. In 1975, Japanese climber Junko Tabei becomes the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest. In 1984, comedian Andy Kaufman dies in Los Angeles at age 35. In 1989, during his visit to Beijing, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev meets with Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, formally ending a 30-year rift between the two Communist powers. In 1999, the Justice Department says preliminary figures from the FBI indicate a decline in serious crime in 1998 for the seventh consecutive year. In 2004, the United States announces a new initiative to speed up the approval process for new combination AIDS drugs that is designed to bring cheap, easy-to-use treatment to millions of people in Africa and the Caribbean. Pope John Paul II names six new saints, including Gianna Beretta Molla, revered by abortion foes because she’d refused to end her pregnancy despite warnings it could kill her. (Beretta Molla, an Italian pediatrician, dies in 1962 at age 39, a week after giving birth to her fourth child.) In 2008, Osama bin Laden says in an audio statement that al-Qaida would continue its holy war against Israel and its allies until the liberation of Palestine.

May 16, 1984: Ohio Gov. Richard Celeste is on hand in Columbus to accept delivery of 10 Cavalier station wagons built at General Motors’ Lordstown plant.

Orval H. Waldron continues his control of the Trumbull County Republican Party after beating back a challenge by a group of committeemen supporting Richard Williams of Cortland, a former Bazetta Township trustee and brother of U.S. Rep. Lyle Williams, R-17th.

Ohio’s $530 million capital construction program includes $33 million for the Mahoning Valley, with the lion’s share going to Youngstown State University and the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine.

May 16, 1969: Shareholders of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. and Lykes Corp. vote simultaneously in favor of merging the two concerns into the new Lykes-Youngstown Corp.

Brig. Gen. John W. Dean, commander of the U.S. Army’s Artillery Brigade, tells about 250 business, professional and military people at the Hotel Ohio for the 22nd Armed Forces Day luncheon that U.S. military forces have convinced the Viet Cong that they cannot win a military victory in the war.

Hugh A. Frost, executive director of the McGuffey Center for 13 years, is named assistant to the president of Youngstown State University and a counselor at the University Counseling Center.

May 16, 1959: Youngstown honors Col. Wade C. Christy, a retired Ohio National Guard officer, at the 10th annual observance of Armed Forces Day.

The Youngstown area registers its second case of polio as St. Elizabeth Hospital reports a positive diagnosis of a 14-year-old Columbiana boy with nonparalytic polio.

An agreement reached in New York between the USW and seven major steel companies clears the way for thousands of Youngstown area steelworkers to begin receiving supplemental unemployment benefits.

May 16, 1934: Youngstown City Prosecutor W.B. Spagnola says that bootlegging will continue until the entire Ohio state liquor code is revised. The law, he says, is a farce.

Mayor Mark E. Moore says Youngstown will accept a PWA grant of about $15,150 toward the Milton Dam repair project.

The estate of Henry A. Butler is estimated at $300,000 in an application filed with probate court and the estate of Almira H. Arms is estimated at $225,000.