Years Ago

Today is Monday, May 21, the 142nd day of 2012. There are 224 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1542: Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto dies while searching for gold along the Mississippi River.

1881: Clara Barton founds the American Red Cross.

1911: During the Mexican Revolution, the Treaty of Ciudad Juarez is signed by President Porfirio Diaz and revolutionary leader Francisco I. Madero; under the agreement, Diaz resigns his office and went into exile.

1927: Charles A. Lindbergh lands his Spirit of St. Louis near Paris, completing the first solo airplane flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 33 1/2 hours.

1932: Amelia Earhart bcomes the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean as she lands in Northern Ireland, about 15 hours after leaving Newfoundland.

1941: A German U-boat sinks the American merchant steamship SS Robin Moor in the South Atlantic after allowing the ship’s passengers and crew to board lifeboats.

1956: The United States explodes the first airborne hydrogen bomb over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific.

1972: Michelangelo’s Pieta, on display at the Vatican, is damaged by a hammer-wielding man who shouted he was Jesus Christ.

1982: During the Falklands War, British amphibious forces land on the beach at San Carlos Bay.

1991: Former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi is assassinated during national elections by a suicide bomber.

VINDICATOR FILES

1987: City Council OKs the sale of a city-owned parking lot adjacent to the defunct Voyager Motor Inn to the federal government for $1, in an effort to clear the way for construction of a federal courthouse at the site.

The Warren Board of Education cancels a summer recreation program which cost about $25,000 and served 300 to 500 youths in an effort to balance the budget.

1972: Bert Olson, general manager of Packard Electric Division of General Motors, names Ronald O. Woods, a Youngstown native, director of public relations.

Elder Odell McCollum, a native of Youngstown, is elevated to the office of bishop at the 19th quadrennial convocation of the United Holy Church of America in Chester, Pa.

1962: The Rev. Norman M. Parr, minister of First Methodist Church, Alliance, is named superintendent of the 76-church Youngstown Methodist District.

Indiana Sen. Vance Hartke urges a Mahoning County Senior Citizens Rally at the Warner Theater to support the King-Anderson Medicare Bill. President Kennedy addressed the crowd via a closed-circuit television broadcast that was projected on the screen.

Jo Anne Keister, 20, of Poland is named Miss Youngstown in the Miss Universe runoffs at the Holiday Bowl. Nearly 500 people attended the finals.

1937: Ore shipments for Mary Furnace at Lowellville leave upper lake ports and are expected at Lowellville at week’s end, the first shipments to this furnace since 1930.

The world’s biggest diesel locomotive, the B&O Railroad’s Fort Pitt Limited comes through Youngstown on a test run.

The CIO-affiliated Steel Workers Organizing Committee wins the exclusive right to represent the 27,000 workers at Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. by a vote of 17,028 to 7,207.