Years Ago

Today is Tuesday, May 17, the 137th day of 2011. There are 228 days left in the year.

Associated Press

On this date in:

1510: Early Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli dies in Florence, Italy; he was probably in his mid 60s.

1792: The New York Stock Exchange has its origins as a group of brokers met under a tree on Wall Street.

1911: Actress Maureen O’Sullivan is born in Boyle, County Roscommon, Ireland.

1946: President Harry S. Truman seizes control of the nation’s railroads, delaying — but not preventing — a threatened strike by engineers and trainmen.

1987: Thirty-seven American sailors are killed when an Iraqi warplane attacks the U.S. Navy frigate Stark in the Persian Gulf. (Iraq and the U.S. called the attack a mistake.)

Vindicator files

1986: Atty. Charles Richards files an appeal against a ruling by Trumbull County Common Pleas Judge Mitchell F. Shaker ordering the removal from office of Trumbull County Commissioner Thomas R. Battin, who has been absent from office since being injured in an automobile accident in June.

Lillian Kornhauser is the first woman installed as president of the Rodef Sholom Temple.

1971: Bombers and cable-cutters hit the Ohio Bell Telephone Co. and AT&T, dynamiting the North Lima Exchange and cutting nine cables in Canfield. The FBI is investigating.

The General Electric plant on Hughes Street is closed by a strike, idling nearly 1,000 employees on three shifts.

Lamech Lawton, 93, of 243 Crandall Ave., a 70-year Mason, is honored by Hillman Lodge 481 F&AM at the Masonic Temple. He has known every master of the lodge since it was organized in 1874.

1961: Two men jump from their car and flee after their 1951 model crashes into a New York Central freight train at the Valley Street crossing in Youngstown.

Public sales of liquor, wine and beer on Sunday will be legal in a limited way in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia hotels after voters make the first dent in Pennsylvania’s centuries-old blue laws.

Donald Beard, a 20-year-old playground worker, is kidnapped from the Sheridan School playground by a gunman who hid in the rear seat of his car and forced him at gunpoint to drive to West Virginia, where he was robbed of $10.

1936: All seven people in an automobile carrying relatives of the bride and groom from a wedding party have died after their sedan struck a freight train west of Austintown. Dead are Patrick Pachell, 28; Carl Pachell, 26; Peter Pachell, 33; Dominic Pachell, 9; John Carrozzino, 13; Guy Pietra, 26, and Sam Carrozzino.

Dr. W.A. Hammaker of Youngstown is one of six new bishops consecrated during the general conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Columbus.

Mill Creek Park’s crab-apple trees are reported at the height of their bloom and are drawing scores of Sunday drivers to the park.