YEARS AGO

May 9, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Today is Sunday, May 9, the 129th day of 2010. There are 236 days left in the year. This is Mother’s Day.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1754: A cartoon in Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette shows a snake cut in pieces, with each part representing an American colony; the caption read, “JOIN, or DIE.”

1860: Writer J.M. Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan, is born in Kirriemuir, Scotland.

1883: Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset is born in Madrid.

1945: U.S. officials announce that a midnight entertainment curfew is being lifted immediately.

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.

1974: The House Judiciary Committee opens public hearings on whether to recommend the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon.

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.

VINDICATOR FILES

1985: A $3 million capital fund campaign opens for the enlargement and refurbishing of the Butler Institute of American Art.

Warren City Council approves a zone change for a controversial church-sponsored senior citizens complex on the city’s northeast side.

Timothy Wood, a graduate of Michigan State University with a degree in ornamental horticulture, is appointed horticulturist at Mill Creek Park.

1970: Five busloads of Youngstown State University students are in Washington to take part in an anti-war rally that is expected to bring thousands from all over the country.

The Mahoning Valley Regional Mass Transit Authority enters negotiations to buy the Youngstown Transit Co.

The Warren Civil Service Commission upholds the firing of a city policeman who was charged with, and later acquitted of, grand larceny.

1960: America’s Pioneer space rocket sends scientific data back from 8 million miles in space, the longest radio reception in history.

Students of the Kennedy School of Youngstown attend the Horace Mann anniversary celebration in Boston as part of the school’s annual classes-away-from-home program.

Two Ohio Edison Co. workers are burned when a switch blows up in their faces in the electric power vault of the Warner Theater. Taken to St. Elizabeth Hospital are Donald Higgins and Edwin McFarland.

1935: Youngstown Prosecutor W.B. Spagnola will rule on the legality of six marble machines seized by police.

Margaret Evans, director of the Butler Art Institute for 16 years, will become a lecturer and instructor at the Youngstown College art department.

Mill Creek Park commissioners purchase the former Mill Creek Riding Club of 18 acres and several buildings on Bears Den Road for $15,000. It will be used for a CCC camp.

Youngstown’s own Gretchen Altpeter is winning acclaim as prima donna in “The Great Waltz,” a Johann Strauss operetta at the Center Theater in New York.