Years Ago

Today is Thursday, May 10, the 131st day of 2012. There are 235 days left in the year.

Associated Press

On this date in:

1775: Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys, along with Col. Benedict Arnold, capture the British-held fortress at Ticonderoga, N.Y.

1865: Union forces capture Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Irwinville, Ga.

1869: A golden spike is driven in Promontory, Utah, marking the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in the United States.

1924: J. Edgar Hoover is given the job of FBI director.

1941: Adolf Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess, parachutes into Scotland on what he claims was a peace mission. (Hess ended up serving a life sentence at Spandau prison until 1987, when he apparently committed suicide.)

1960: The nuclear-powered submarine USS Triton completes a submerged navigation of the globe.

1981: Socialist Francois Mitterrand defeats incumbent Valery Giscard d’Estaing in the second round of France’s presidential election.

Vindicator files

1987: The Vindicator publishes a collection of photographs of Adolf Hitler and his entourage at his mountain villa in the Obersaltzberg region of Germany. The photos were printed from a role of film found in a German house by Paul N. Romack of Youngstown, when he was a 24-year-old staff sergeant in the final days of World War II.

A funeral Mass is said in Latin for the Rev. John F. Roach, 85, at the modest Queen of the Holy Rosary Chapel in Vienna Township, where he had labored for years to preserve the Tridentine Mass, against opposition from Bishop James W. Malone of the Youngstown Diocese.

1972: Ted E. Dravis, executive director of the Mahoning Chapter of the American Red Cross, urges establishment of a free volunteer blood bank program that would serve 336,000 people in the area.

Joseph T. Lykes, chairman of Lykes Youngstown Corp., predicts that preferred stock dividends will resume once the corporation establishes “a solid earnings base.”

Three young men, one from Sharon, Pa., one from Columbus and one from Cleveland, are arrested and charged with first degree murder in the death of Donald Levitin, a Columbus furniture salesman formerly from Liberty Township.

1962: Youngstown City Council’s contingent to the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Miami is trimmed from six to four. Council president A.B. Flask and 5th Ward Councilman Paul Kechler say they won’t be going after Mayor Harry Savasten questioned why six men had to go to the four day event.

Youngstown’s elusive firebug, inactive since the first of the year, is blamed for four fires overnight. The pyromaniac is credited with more than 40 fires since December 1961.

1937: P.B. Beatty of Hermitage transports 125 children to and from classes over a 58-mile route everyday in Hickory Township. In 17 years as a school bus driver, he has traveled 3 million miles.

Youngstown Mayor Lionel Evans seeks a means of averting a steel strike in the Youngstown district, as one appears to become increasingly imminent.

The Northeastern National Life Insurance Co. says corporate scouts have more jobs to offer than there are top-flight college graduates to fill them.