Years Ago

Today is Tuesday, May 6, the 126th day of 2014. There are 239 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1863: The Civil War Battle of Chancellorsville in Virginia ends with a Confederate victory over Union forces.

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

1889: The Paris Exposition formally opens, featuring the just-completed Eiffel Tower.

1810: Britain’s Edwardian era ends with the death of King Edward VII; he is succeeded by George V.

1935: The Works Progress Administration begins operating under an executive order signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

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.

1954: Medical student Roger Bannister breaks the 4-minute mile during a track meet in Oxford, England, in 3:59.4.

1960: Britain’s Princess Margaret marries Antony Armstrong-Jones, a commoner, at Westminster Abbey. (They divorced in 1978.)

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.

1981: Yale architecture student Maya Ying Lin is named winner of a competition to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

1994: Former Arkansas state worker Paula Jones files suit against President Bill Clinton, alleging he’d sexually harassed her in 1991. (Jones reached a settlement with Clinton in November 1998.)

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and French President Francois Mitterrand formally open the Channel Tunnel between their countries.

2004: President George W. Bush apologizes for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers, calling it “a stain on our country’s honor”; he rejects calls for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation.

VINDICATOR FILES

1989: Before a $225 million plant that would bring 125 jobs to Warren is built, Ohio Clean Fuels must find a Northeastern Ohio utility company willing to buy the oil that the plant would make from coal.

Two more cows that drank from the middle fork of Little Beaver Creek were contaminated with unsafe levels of the chemical mirex, a meat inspector for the Ohio Department of Agriculture says. The creek was contaminated by the former Nease Chemical plant.

Cedar Point unveils its new $8 million attraction, the Magnum XL-200 roller coaster, which is one of the tallest and fastest in the world.

1974: Two Youngstown policemen, Patrolmen John Palma, 26, and William Norris, 25, hurrying to answer a disturbance call at Idora Park, are injured in a collision with a car at Hillman Street and Falls Avenue.

A large quantity of plate copper is taken in a robbery at Plant 16 of Wean United Co. on Crescent Street after a man tied up a security guard and a company electrician.

Youngstown Mayor Jack C. Hunter makes an 11th- hour appeal for voter support of the half-percent increase in the city income tax for capital improvements, reminding citizens of the pressing need for public works.

1964: Incumbent Joseph Baldine of Hubbard and challenger Gary Thompson are the top two vote-getters in a nine-man race for the Democratic nomination for Trumbull County commissioner. In the Republican primary, Commissioner Roy Stillwagon is defeated by industrialist William B. Klee.

U.S. Rep. Michael J. Kirwan piles up 43,204 votes in the Democratic primary for the 19th Congressional District, getting 68 percent of the vote in a four-man race. His closest challenger was Trumbull County Commissioner Robert E. Hagan who got 16,169 votes.

Veteran Democratic jurist Lynn B. Griffith of Warren and state Tax Commissioner Louis J. Schneider Jr. of Cincinnati, a Republican, win their party nominations in the only Supreme Court race at stake in Ohio’s primary election.

1939: Mildred Kariher of New Middletown wins The Vindicator spelling bee for Mahoning County public and parochial school champions at South High School auditorium.

German B. Buehrle, 69, long prominent in Youngstown real estate and owner of the Hollywood Park plat, dies of heart disease at his home at 118 E. Midlothian Blvd.

Veterinarians at the Craver Animal Hospital give a blood transfusion to “Jeannie,” attempting to save the life of the dog guide on whom Grace Moses, Youngstown blind woman, depends.