Years Ago

Today is Wednesday, May 7, the 127th day of 2014. There are 238 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1789: America’s first inaugural ball takes place in New York in honor of President George Washington, who’d taken the oath of office a week earlier.

1889: The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore opens.

1915: Nearly 1,200 people die when a German torpedo sinks the British liner RMS Lusitania.

1945: Germany signs an unconditional surrender at Allied headquarters in Rheims, France, ending its role in World War II.

1954: The 55-day Battle of Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam ends with Vietnamese insurgents overrunning French forces.

1975: President Gerald Ford declares an end to the “Vietnam era.” In Ho Chi Minh City — formerly Saigon — the Viet Cong celebrate its takeover.

2009: President Barack Obama and South Korea’s new leader, Park Geun-hye, meet at the White House, where they project a united front as they warn North Korea against further nuclear provocations.

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1989: Trumbull County officials are confident that tax breaks, sewers and new highway access will spark new industrial growth around the Youngstown Municipal Airport.

The 121-year-old Kidd’s Mill Bridge over the Shenango River in Pymatuning Township will be restored with work scheduled to start during “See Pennsylvania’s Covered Bridges Week,” which was declared by Gov. Robert Casey to call attention to the need to preserve the state’s 220 covered bridges.

Quarterbacks Frank Edie, James Stanford and Ray Isaac combine with receivers Lorenzo Davis and Vince Marrow for a demonstration of explosive offense during Youngstown State University’s Red-White game at Stambaugh Stadium.

1974: Ohio’s congressional delegation is ready to modify legislative federal Environmental Protection Agency directives on cleaning up the Mahoning River in order to protect the Youngstown area’s jobs and industry, Sen. Robert Taft Jr., R-Ohio, tells the Penn-Ohio Chapter of the American Metallurgical Engineers.

Members of Mahoning County’s Welfare Advisory Board urge county commissioners to do all possible to keep the county Nursing Home operating and even extend it, if possible.

Advertisement: The lowest list price factory air- conditioned car built in America, the AMC Gremlin, available at Ben Larney’s Youngstown AMC, 129 W. Rayen Ave., $2,697.

1964: Robert Collingwood, 77, of Youngstown who was in a car that plunged over a Struthers hill dies of his injuries in South Side Hospital.

Walter L. Kuchtyn of Boardman announces plans to inaugurate helicopter charter service in Youngstown that would provide businessmen with fast flights to Cleveland and Pittsburgh airports.

Five Youngstown University coeds vie for queen of Spring Weekend. They are Carole Hamilton, Patricia Kusic, Nancy Botak, Maureen Lyden and Patricia Olinik.

1939: W.A. Patterson, president of United Airlines, says his company will inaugurate service at Youngstown’s municipal airport as soon as the facility is ready to accommodate the line’s huge 24-passenger planes.

Robert H. Ickes, 25-year-old foster son of Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, is married to Mercille Charlotte Levine, 22, in the parsonage of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Lisbon by the Rev. C.W. Kennedy. The couple obtained their license at the Columbiana County Courthouse from Deputy Clerk Lois Armstrong.

Sixth Ward Councilman Arthur Gundry asks the law department to prepare legislation to provide jail sentences of up to 90 days for gamblers caught in Youngstown in the possession of bug slips.