Years Ago

Today is Thursday, May 5, the 125th day of 2011. There are 240 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1821: Napoleon Bona-parte, 51, dies in exile on the island of St. Helena.

1891: New York’s Carnegie Hall (then named “Music Hall”) has its official opening night.

1925: Schoolteacher John T. Scopes is charged in Tennessee with violating a state law that prohibits teaching the theory of evolution. (Scopes is found guilty, but his conviction is later set aside.)

1936: The Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, falls to Italian invaders.

1941: Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie returns to Addis Ababa after the Italians are driven out with the help of Allied forces.

1942: During World War II, Japanese forces land on the Philippine island of Corregidor.

ns on Broadway.

1961: Astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr. becomes America’s first space traveler as he makes a 15-minute suborbital flight aboard Freedom 7, a Mercury capsule launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla.

President John F. Kennedy signs a law raising the minimum wage to $1.15 an hour.

1981: Irish Republican Army hunger-striker Bobby Sands dies at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland in his 66th day without food.

VINDICATOR FILES

1986: Walter Duzzny, director of the Youngstown Mahoning County Disaster Service Agency, says law enforcement agencies should have more power to conduct spot checks of trucks hauling chemicals through the area.

A Vindicator/YSU poll predicts U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. will win renomination by a landslide, garnering more than 60 percent of the vote in a three-man Democratic race.

1971: Former Mayor Frank R. Franko sweeps to victory over Edward Sobnosky in the Democratic primary for mayor and will face Republican Mayor Jack C. Hunter in November.

Jerome F. McNally, a 26-year-old spirited campaigner, upsets incumbent John F. Franken in the 1st Ward Democratic primary.

Struthers voters reject a $3.4 million bond issue for construction of a new high school.

1961: Mahoning County Deputy Victor Ranalli frightens off youth who were attempting to enter the North Jackson branch of Mahoning National Bank.

A charge of carrying a concealed weapon is filed against a 24-year-old Youngstown man who pulled a pistol on off-duty Patrolman Peter Novosel who pulled up next the man at a stop sign and asked him why he was driving at a high rate of speed on Wilson Avenue.

1936: The Youngstown Board of Eduction approves a five-year contract for Superintendent George E. Roudebush at $10,000 a year. Roudebush says he will take the same 10 percent cut in pay that has been imposed on other school employees.

The Jeanette stack at the Brier Hill plant of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., idle since 1930, will be lighted as soon as reconditioning is complete.