Years Ago

Today is Tuesday, May 1, the 122nd day of 2012. There are 244 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

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

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

1962: The first Target discount store opens in Roseville, Minn.

1987: During a visit to West Germany, Pope John Paul II beatifies Edith Stein, a Jewish-born Carmelite nun who was gassed in the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.

1992: On the third day of the Los Angeles riots, a visibly shaken Rodney King appears in public to appeal for calm, pleading, “Can we all get along?”

VINDICATOR FILES

1987: State development officials predict that the new Avanti Motor Corp. will receive approval of a $1.5 million low-interest loan within three weeks.

The Rev. Jay Geisler, a leader of laid-off steelworkers in Aliquippa, Pa., says during “An Evening of Prayer and Action” at St. Stephen of Hungary Church in Youngstown that too many of the unemployed are doing nothing to help themselves.

1972: Alton McDonald, general manager of the Metro Regional Transit Authority in Akron, warns that Youngstown can expect a tough and expensive uphill battle to get buses rolling again if there is a transit shutdown.

Campbell Memorial’s Walt Vrabel dominated discus activity and Beaver Local’s Bob Bentz shattered the two-mile record to pace the Youngstown area delegation at the Bellaire relays.

1962: Numbers operator Anthony Gianfrancesco, 36, of 6640 Market St. has the latest charges against him dismissed after Judge John J. Leskovyansky rules that police conducted an illegal search before finding bug slips hidden in his car.

U.S. Rep. Carrol D. Kearnes of Farrell, ranking Republican member of the House Education and Labor Committee, is defeated for renomination by Dr. James Weaver of Erie in the climax to a bitter primary campaign.

1937: The Youngstown-Warren district of the Republic Steel Corp. is divided with Roy L. Leventry named manager of the Youngstown District and F.E. Flynn named to manage the Warren district.

Hundreds of participants are expected at Warren’s sixth annual Eisteddfod with prizes of more than $1,000 at stake in vocal and instrumental music, literature and art.