Years Ago

Today is Sunday, May 1, the 121st day of 2011. 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.

1811: The frigate HMS Guerriere boards the merchant brig USS Spitfire and seizes master apprentice John Diggio, a native of Maine, heightening tensions between the U.S. and Britain.

1911: Harry Von Tilzer and Will Dillon publish their song “I Want a Girl (Just Like the Girl That Married Dear Old Dad).”

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

1941: The Orson Welles motion picture “Citizen Kane” premieres in New York.

1960: The Soviet Union shoots down an American U-2 reconnaissance plane over Sverdlovsk and captures its pilot, Francis Gary Powers.

1961: The first U.S. airline hijacking takes place as Antulio Ramirez Ortiz, a Miami electrician, commandeers a National Airlines plane en route to Key West, Fla., and forces the pilot to fly to Cuba.

1971: The intercity passenger rail service Amtrak goes into operation.

VINDICATOR FILES

1986: An Ohio health department official says it will be at least two to three months before he can investigate claims that the serious disease rate is abnormally high in an area surrounding a Springfield Township landfill.

The Youngstown Park & Recreation Commission votes to close all park facilities, including pools, playgrounds and the Stambaugh Golf Course because the city lacks liability insurance.

Mahoning County sheriff’s deputies seize six electronic poker machines at a Struthers restaurant and North Lima service station.

1971: Youngstown’s train service to Washington and Chicago ends, leaving the city with a commuter train to Cleveland as its only rail transport.

Gov. John J. Gilligan estimates that the state’s contribution for public education will rise to 43.5 percent of the cost of education as part of his $862 million biennial budget.

Vice Section officers led by Sgt. Randall Wellington seize $2,500 in gambling paraphernalia and about $7,000 in numbers slips in a raid on an Elm Street service station.

1961: Mayor Frank R. Franko calls Capt. Stephen R. Birich at the Police Department at 2:30 a.m. and informs him that he is suspended indefinitely. Birich said the mayor gave no reason for the suspension and Franko was unavailable for comment.

Mahoning County Engineer Samuel Gould Jr. will check the engineering phases of a proposed contract between the U.S. government and Mahoning and Trumbull counties for construction of the $14.5 million West Branch Reservoir.

April was cold and wet, with an average temperature of 42.1 degrees, 5.1 below normal, and rainfall totaling 4.99 inches.

1936: April is the best month of recovery in the Youngstown area since 1930, with 1,064 new cars and trucks sold, Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co.’s hot strip mill breaking all production records and other steel output approaching 80 percent of capacity. Power consumption was 37 percent above the same month a year earlier.

James DeNiro, a turnkey at the city water department, files an injunction to stop water works employees from being paid. He claims that while he was fired, two new hires were given jobs after taking only oral civil service exams. One of them was Mayor Lionel Evans’ barber.

Three bushel baskets of checks received by the county treasurer’s office in the final hours of tax collection remain unsorted, after work was delayed when a tear gas bomb was accidentally discharged in the treasurer’s vault.

Betty Kile, Ruth Wright and Laurabelle Wighton, all juniors at Youngstown College, are candidates for queen of the fourth annual junior prom.