Years Ago

Today is Friday, May 27, the 147th day of 2011. There are 218 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1861: Chief Justice Roger Taney, sitting as a federal circuit court judge in Baltimore, rules that President Abraham Lincoln lacks the authority to suspend the writ of habeas corpus (Lincoln disregards the ruling).

1896: Two hundred and fifty-five people are killed when a tornado strikes St. Louis, Mo., and East St. Louis, Ill.

1911: Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey is born in Wallace, S.D., and actor Vincent Price is born in St. Louis, Mo.

1929: Charles Lindbergh Jr. marries Anne Morrow in Englewood, N.J.

1935: The Supreme Court strikes down the National Industrial Recovery Act.

1936: The Cunard liner RMS Queen Mary leaves England on its maiden voyage to New York.

1937: The newly completed Golden Gate Bridge connecting San Francisco and Marin County, Calif., is opened to pedestrian traffic, a day before vehicular traffic.

1941: Amid rising world tensions, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaims an “unlimited national emergency” during a radio address from the White House.

The British Royal Navy sinks the German battleship Bismarck off France, with a loss of some 2,000 lives, three days after the Bismarck sank the HMS Hood.

1964: Independent India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, dies.

1993: Five people are killed in a bombing at the Uffizi museum of art in Florence, Italy.

VINDICATOR FILES

1986: Dr. Thomas Shipka, negotiator for faculty at Youngstown State University, says the faulty is seeking parity with other Ohio state universities. Dr. G.L. Mears, YSU budget director, says that would result in an increase in student fees of nearly 20 percent.

The Ohio EPA has refused to give Mahoning County officials details of a chemical spill in Poland Township two years earlier.

Warren police are searching for clues to the identity of a full term infant girl whose body was found in the Mahoning River in a trash bag weighted with stones.

1971: Councilman Herman “Pete” Starks says the Youngstown Civil Service Commission should continue to use locally prepared tests rather than a standardized state aptitude test that he believes may be discriminatory against minorities.

Directors of the Youngstown Area Community Action Council will seek an injunction against a ruling made by the Office of Economic Opportunity calling for the replacement of some officials on the CAC board.

Mr. and Mrs. James L. Beeghly attend a dedication ceremony for the Beeghly Gymnasium at Thiel College in Greenville, Pa., named for Youngstown Industrialist Leon A. Beeghly and his wife.

1961: U.S. Rep. Michael J. Kirwan, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is one of three hosts of a $100-per-plate dinner honoring President John F. Kennedy on his 44th birthday at the Washington Armory.

S.S. Fekett, director of the Mahoning Valley Sanitary Distinct, warns that water service could be shut off to Youngstown if City Council refuses to pay increases approved by the MVSD Board and the Court of Jurisdiction.

With Memorial Day falling on Tuesday, some downtown Youngstown stores have an announced shorter hours of operations. Union barbers will be closed Tuesday and Wednesday.

1936: Alfred E. Benesch, state finance director, asks the Ohio House to approve $30,250 to finance a state insurance department investigation of insurance fraud in Youngstown that could involve as many as 640 Youngstown residents on a “suspect list.”

Surgeons at South Side Hospital amputate the right leg of Lorretta Cicchillo, whose leg was crushed by a streetcar after she stumbled on the Youngstown & Suburban trolley tracks on Southern Boulevard near her Ferncliff Avenue home. She was running toward a group of children playing on the other side of the tracks.

Declaring that the city’s financial position precludes any possibility of salary increases, Mayor Lionel Evans vetoes a change in the salary ordinance for the health department that would give employees there a raise.