Years Ago

Today is Sunday, May 18, the 138th day of 2014. There are 227 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1642: The Canadian city of Montreal is founded by French colonists.

1765: About one-fourth of Montreal is destroyed by a fire.

1896: The Supreme Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson, endorses “separate but equal” racial segregation, a concept renounced 58 years later in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.

1910: Halley’s Comet passes by Earth, brushing it with its tail.

1933: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs a measure creating the Tennessee Valley Authority.

1934: Congress approves, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs, the so-called “Lindbergh Act,” providing for the death penalty in cases of interstate kidnapping.

1944: During World War II, Allied forces finally occupy Monte Cassino in Italy after a four-month struggle with Axis troops.

1969: Astronauts Eugene A. Cernan, Thomas P. Stafford and John W. Young blast off aboard Apollo 10 on a mission to orbit the moon.

1974: India conducts its first nuclear test explosion.

1980: The Mount St. Helens volcano in Washington state explodes, leaving 57 people dead or missing.

1994: Israeli troops complete their withdrawal from the Gaza Strip as Palestinian authorities take over.

2004: Former New York City fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen and former police Chief Bernard Kerik, lionized after the 9/11 attack, come under harsh criticism from some members of the September 11 commission who say there had been an initial lack of cooperation between their departments.

2009: President Barack Obama tells Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu during a White House meeting he needs to stop Jewish settlements.

2013: A car driven by an 87-year-old man plows into dozens of hikers during a parade in Damascus, Va., injuring about 50.

French President Francois Hollande signs a law authorizing same-sex marriages and adoption by gay couples.

VINDICATOR FILES

1989: Atty. Edward A. Flask says he doesn’t know why someone would have put a bomb outside the back door to his North Side home. The bomb’s fuse had burned down to the blasting cap, but it did not detonate.

Sharon City Council President Vito Manilla says he will be at the next meeting of council, the first he’ll attend since December. He says he has been under a doctor’s care for a heart ailment.

The service workers union in Niles demands an end to the Summer Youth Employment Training Program until the city makes good on a promise to hire four full-time workers in the parks, streets and water departments.

1974: The proposed site for the new Juvenile Justice Center for Mahoning County is on 5 acres on Scott Street, bounded by Andrews and Wick avenues.

Consulting engineers hired by Youngstown tell Mayor Jack Hunter and other city officials that the city must act this summer if the rapidly deteriorating Lake Milton dam is to be saved.

Robert Trucksis, principal of Sheridan School, is elected president of the Downtown Kiwanis Club.

1964: Some 16,000 people jam Shields Road and nearby streets to the new Ursuline Motherhouse open house. Deputies, highway patrolmen and police from neighboring departments worked through the day in a vain effort to keep traffic moving.

A jury of five men and seven women begins hearing a gambling case in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court against Ronald Carabbia, 35, one of three Struthers brothers involved in the rackets.

The Poland Optimist Club expects to net $400 toward sponsorship of a Colts League baseball team from its first antique and classic car show held by the Optimists and the Greater Youngstown Area Model T Club.

1939: Two slot machines and two roulette wheels are found by Youngstown police during a raid on the Savoy Club, 121 S. Hazel St.

A second jury of nine men and three women is named in the trial of Norman W. Smith accused of three murders in North Lima. The jury will hear mental health experts to determine if Smith is sane.

The Ohio Senate passes 25-1 a bill that would permit suits against gambling houses for three times the losses of a “customer.”