Years Ago

Today is Sunday, May 6, the 127th day of 2012. There are 239 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1862: Author and philosopher Henry David Thoreau dies in Concord, Mass., at age 44.

1882: President Chester Alan Arthur signs the Chinese Exclusion Act, which calls for barring Chinese immigrants from the U.S. for 10 years (Arthur had opposed an earlier version with a 20-year ban).

1937: The hydrogen-filled German airship Hindenburg burns and crashes in Lakehurst, N.J., killing 35 of the 97 people on board and a Navy crewman on the ground.

1941: Josef Stalin assumes the Soviet premiership, replacing Vyacheslav M. Molotov.

1954: Medical student Roger Bannister breaks the four-minute mile during a track meet in Oxford, England, in 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds.

1962: In the first test of its kind, the submerged submarine USS Ethan Allen fires a Polaris missile armed with a nuclear warhead that detonates above the Pacific Ocean.

1992: Former Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev delivers a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., where Winston Churchill had spoken of the “Iron Curtain”; Gorbachev says the world is still divided, between North and South, rich and poor.

1996: The body of former CIA director William E. Colby is found washed up on a southern Maryland riverbank, eight days after he’d disappeared.

2006: Lillian Gertrud Asplund, the last American survivor of the sinking of the Titanic, as well as the last survivor with actual memories of the disaster (she was 5 years old at the time), dies in Shrewsbury, Mass., at age 99.

VINDICATOR FILES

1987: Youngstown Mayor Patrick J. Ungaro cruises to victory in the Democratic primary, surpassing his closest challenger by 11,000 votes.

Atty. Patrick J. Kerrigan wins nomination for a six-year term on the Youngstown Municipal Court.

Three incumbent mayors in Trumbull County are defeated: William S. Colletta in Hubbard by Albert J. Sauline; Joseph J. Melfi in Girard by Kenneth Woodford, and Robert W. Zajack in McDonald by Thomas J. Hannon.

1972: Donald P. Levitin, 26-year-old Columbus furniture salesman who was kidnapped while en route to a bank with an $800 deposit, driven to Cleveland and murdered, was a Youngstown native who had been president of the Liberty High School Student Council in his senior year.

Pupils in Campbell’s public schools are told to report for classes even if teachers are continuing their strike after weekend negotiations.

A team of skilled burglars sat inside the Second National Bank branch in Lordstown while deputy sheriffs checked the outside of the bank for signs of a burglary. The deputies left when no one from the bank came to unlock the building, and the thieves finished cleaning out the vault of $500,000.

1962: The Youngstown district’s No. 1 customer, the automobile industry, is enjoying an unusually good year, which means that the district’s business and employment prospects are higher than they’ve been for a couple of years.

At least 47,000 men, women and children sip their free Type III Sabin polio vaccine on the first day of a two-day vaccination campaign at 20 sites throughout Mahoning County.

More than 10,000 youths are drawn to Idora Park for the 32nd Vindicator Hi-Y, Tri-Hi-Y Play Day. The Beaver, Pa., High School band took first place in the in the dance band competition.

1937: Mrs. Ernest Goodman, who is in charge of genealogical and historical research at the Youngstown Public Library, cautions that in searching a family tree someone is may find tramps, perhaps criminals, hidden in the shadows of kings.

Three men, wanted in Indiana Harbor and East Chicago, Ill., for a series of armed robberies are in the Sharon, Pa., jail after being trapped in a rooming house by eight policemen, including two from Illinois who had helped set the trap for John Dillinger three years ago.

Niles Councilman C.W. Robinson says as long as gambling exists, the city might as well tax it, including slot machines, sports pools and bingo.