Today in history

Today is Friday, May 22, the 142nd day of 2009. There are 223 days left in the year. On this date in 1969, the lunar module of Apollo 10, with Thomas P. Stafford and Eugene Cernan aboard, flies to within nine miles of the moon’s surface in a dress rehearsal for the first lunar landing.

In 1813, composer Richard Wagner is born in Leipzig, Germany. In 1859, author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, is born in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 1907, actor-director Laurence Olivier is born in Dorking, Surrey, England. In 1939, the foreign ministers of Germany and Italy, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Galeazzo Ciano, sign a “Pact of Steel” committing the two countries to a military alliance. In 1968, the nuclear-powered submarine USS Scorpion, with 99 men aboard, sinks in the Atlantic Ocean. (The remains of the sub are later found on the ocean floor 400 miles southwest of the Azores.) In 1972, President Richard Nixon begins a visit to the Soviet Union, during which he and Kremlin leaders sign the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. In 1979, Canadians vote in parliamentary elections that put the Progressive Conservatives in power, ending the 11-year tenure of Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. In 1992, after a reign lasting nearly 30 years, Johnny Carson hosts NBC’s “Tonight Show” for the last time.

May 22, 1984: Eleven seniors at the Mahoning County Joint Vocational School unveil a bright yellow 1943 Piper Cub that they restored as a class project for its owner, John Buckner of New Castle.

The Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine board of trustees adopts a budget of $12.4 million for fiscal year 1984-85.

Merlin H. Valot Jr., Austintown school superintendent, retires after heading the district for 10 years.

May 22, 1969: Clarence C. Hanna, executive vice president of the Builders Association of the Mahoning Valley, sends a strongly worded protest to the chairman of President Nixon’s Council of Economic Advisers, accusing General Motors of upsetting the balance in the construction trades with ”unrelenting overtime.” Hanna says craftsmen are quitting established contractors to stand in line for overtime work at the Lordstown GM plant, where they are working 60 hour weeks and earning as much as $600.

About 500 youths, most of them from Central State University, march into the Statehouse in Columbus to present demands that have been rejected by the university president. They are asking the birthdays of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. be made holidays, creation of a Black Studies department, elimination of ROTC, disarming of campus security police and open admission for black students.

May 22, 1959: Mill Creek Park commissioners vote to place renewal of a .4-mill operating levy on the November ballot.

Saramar Aluminum, struggling to keep up with new orders, puts into operation a new 1,500-pound aluminium press, part of the company’s $300,000 expansion program.

Two men with 50 years of service and 137 others with employment ranging from 25 to 45 years, are honored by the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. at a recognition dinner at the Campbell Works office building. John Stanko and George Rosian are the 50-year men.

May 22, 1934: C.W. Ricksecker, principal of Chaney High School, receives his doctor of education degree from the University of Pittsburgh.

Mahoning County Prosecutor J.H. Leighninger says, “if the city is ready to admit that it can’t cope with the vice situation in Youngstown, I’m willing to step in and help.” However, Leighninger says, it appears the city is just attempting to make the county a scapegoat.

The Youngstown Board of Education authorizes the restoration of sick leave for public school teachers on a half-pay basis with the beginning of the new school year.