Years Ago

Today is Saturday, May 11, the 131st day of 2013. There are 234 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1647: Peter Stuyvesant arrives in New Amsterdam to become governor of New Netherland.

1862: During the Civil War, the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia is scuttled by its crew off Craney Island, Va., to prevent it from falling into Union hands.

1927: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is founded during a banquet at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles.

1935: The Rural Electrification Administration is created as one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs.

1943: During World War II, U.S. forces land on the Aleutian island of Attu, which is held by the Japanese; the Americans take the island 19 days later.

1953: A tornado devastates Waco, Texas, claiming 114 lives.

1960: Israeli agents capture Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

1973: The espionage trial of Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo in the “Pentagon Papers” case comes to an end as Judge William M. Byrne dismisses all charges, citing government misconduct.

1981: Legendary reggae artist Bob Marley dies in a Miami hospital at age 36.

The Andrew Lloyd Webber musical “Cats” opens in London.

1996: An Atlanta-bound ValuJet DC-9 catches fire shortly after takeoff from Miami and crashes into the Florida Everglades, killing all 110 people on board.

VINDICATOR FILES

1988: A federal court gives Sharon Steel Corp. permission to begin operating a coke-producing plant in Monessen, Pa., before new pollution control equipment is installed.

The Ohio Supreme Court holds session in the Trumbull County Courthouse as part of an effort by the court to reach out to citizens by traveling the state.

Union employees at General Electric Co.’s Austintown Coil Plant walk out in protest of the company’s use of “excessive” mandatory overtime at a time when other employees remain laid off.

Trumbull County commissioners say it is unlikely the 911 Emergency Communications System will be placed on the November ballot after it is soundly defeated on the primary ballot, but they say the issue is not dead.

1973: Ground is broken at Youngstown State University for the $6.3 million Bliss Hall Music and Fine Arts Center.

Gov. John J. Gilligan signs a bill allocating $91 million federal revenue sharing money, including $750,000 for construction of a National Guard armory in the Youngstown-Warren area.

1963: Rosemarie Paini, a senior in the school of education, reigns as May Queen over Youngstown University’s annual May Dance at Idora Park Ballroom.

In a pioneer operation at St. Vincent Charity Hospital in Cleveland a patient’s body temperature is lowered to 54 degrees and breath, heartbeat and blood circulation are suspended for 12 tense minutes while a team of 15 surgeons repair a ruptured aneurysm in the brain of Mrs. Elma Adams, 63, of Cleveland.

Ohio liquor agents and Youngstown intelligence squad patrolmen Jack Lynch and Andrew Kovac arrest four people in three raids looking for moonshine.

1938: Nathan Straus, federal housing administrator, comes to Youngstown to launch slum clearance for a $3.5 million low-cost housing project near Westlake’s Crossing. More than 1,500 people see the first of 30 shacks that will be leveled taken down.

Members of the Ohio State Medical Association open their 92nd annual meeting in Columbus with an expression of their strong opposition to proposals in Washington for socialized medicine.

The Austintown Board of Education and Austintown Township Board of Trustees plan to take legal action to prevent the incorporation of “Meander Village,” which would be a village of about 50 people in an area that includes the infamous Rendezvous Villa.