YEARS AGO

May 1, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Today is Saturday, May 1, the 121st day of 2010. There are 244 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1707: The Kingdom of Great Britain is created as a treaty merging England and Scotland takes effect.

1786: Mozart’s opera “The Marriage of Figaro” premieres in Vienna.

1884: Construction begins on the first skyscraper, a 10-story structure in Chicago built by the Home Insurance Co. of New York.

1898: Commodore George Dewey gives the command, “You may fire when you are ready, Gridley,” as an American naval force destroys a Spanish squadron in Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War.

1909: Walter Reed General Hospital (later a part of Walter Reed Army Medical Center) in Washington, D.C., admits its first patients.

1931: New York’s 102-story Empire State Building is dedicated.

1960: The Soviet Union shoots down an American U-2 reconnaissance plane over Sverdlovsk and captures its pilot, Francis Gary Powers, who is later convicted of espionage but returns to the United States in 1962 in exchange for a captured Soviet spy.

VINDICATOR FILES

1985: Housing and Urban Development officials give the green light to Youngstown and the Cafaro Co. to enter into various agreements that will lead to the release of a $9.3 million federal grant toward construction of the proposed $32 million Ronneburg Brewery.

1970: Youngstown teachers vote 3-1 to strike unless weekend negotiations between the Youngstown Education Association and Board of Education produce some results.

A 47-year-old Cleveland Street woman is free on $1,500 bond after pleading innocent to shooting and wounding 13-year-old Kenneth Clark during an argument at his Hillman Street home.

1960: Rep. Michael J. Kirwan, D-Youngstown, tells a cheering crowd of 5,000 partisans that no matter who the Democrats nominate for president “he will be able to get out of a sick bed and lick the Republican nominee in November. “

Vindicator Politics Editor Clingan Jackson writes that most incumbent Democratic and Republican candidates in the primary election appear headed for re-election.

1935: Mahoning County Prosecutor J.H. Leighninger and county Detective George H. Hadnett conduct a secret investigation resulting in the arrest of two distributors of allegedly obscene and indecent magazines that have found their way into the hands of school children throughout the city.

Benjamin Blumenthal, manager of the Robins Furniture Co. on Market St., is arrested on charges brought by Walter Mitchell, Mahoning County sales tax manager, that Blumenthal did not collect the state sales tax on sales at the store.