Years Ago

Today is Wednesday, May 28, the 148th day of 2014. There are 217 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1533: The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, declares the marriage of England’s King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn valid.

1863: The 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, made up of freed blacks, leaves Boston to fight for the Union in the Civil War.

1912: The Senate Commerce Committee issues its report on the Titanic disaster that cites a “state of absolute unpreparedness,” improperly tested safety equipment and an “indifference to danger” as some of the causes of an “unnecessary tragedy.”

1929: The first all-color talking picture, “On with the Show,” opens in New York.

1934: The Dionne quin-tuplets — Annette, Cecile, Emilie, Marie and Yvonne — are born to Elzire Dionne at the family farm in Ontario, Canada. (Of the five, Annette and Cecile are still living.)

1937: President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushes a button in Washington signaling that vehicular traffic could begin crossing the just-opened Golden Gate Bridge in California.

1940: During World War II, the Belgian army surrenders to invading German forces.

1959: The U.S. Army launches Able, a rhesus monkey, and Baker, a squirrel monkey, aboard a Jupiter missile for a suborbital flight that both primates survive.

1961: Amnesty International has its beginnings with the publication of an article in the British newspaper The Observer, titled “The Forgotten Prisoners.”

1964: The charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization is issued at the start of a meeting of the Palestine National Congress in Jerusalem.

1977: Some 165 people are killed when fire races through the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Ky.

1984: President Ronald Reagan leads a state funeral at Arlington National Cemetery for an unidentified American soldier killed in the Vietnam War. (However, the remains were later identified through DNA as those of Air Force 1st Lt. Michael J. Blassie, and were sent to St. Louis for hometown burial.)

2004: The Iraqi Governing Council chooses Iyad Allawi, a longtime anti-Saddam Hussein exile, to become prime minister of Iraq’s interim government.

2009: A white New York City police officer kills an off-duty black colleague in a friendly fire incident in East Harlem. (A grand jury later declined to indict Officer Andrew Dunton in the shooting of Officer Omar Edwards, who had drawn his gun and was chasing a man who had broken into his car.)

VINDICATOR FILES

1989: The Mahoning Valley is eyed as a good location for medical waste incinerators because of its proximity to metropolitan areas and Pennsylvania, according to incinerator operators and an environmental group.

The Trumbull County Sheriff’s Department reinstates marine patrols on Mosquito Lake in cooperation with the Army Corps of Engineers and Ohio State Parks Department.

Cardinal Mooney’s Efren Mojica wins the state singles tennis crown in his fourth appearance at the Class A-AA tournament.

1974: An estimated 10,000 spectators line the route of the Youngstown Memorial Day parade. The parade marshal was Lt. Col. Vincent J. Doria, commander of the United Veterans Council.

Dr. David A. Belinky, Mahoning County coroner since 1945, dies of a heart ailment in North Side Hospital where he had been a patient for five weeks. He was 71.

A former Youngstown couple, the Rev. Thomas R. Ashton, 52, and his wife, the former Elizabeth Brown Powers, 50, are killed in a two-car collision near Medina, where the Rev. Ashton was minister at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.

1964: Youngstown City Council adopts an ordinance providing $15,000 for appraisal of land for the proposed $3 million, 500-car parking garage on Commerce Street.

First Ward Councilman David O’Neil tells city council there is evidence of inferior work at the city’s $5.5 million sewage treatment plant.

City Park Superintendent Edward Finamore reports a white mute swan at Crandall Park hatched four cygnets, bringing the number of swans at the park to 14, including four black Australian swans.

1939: Charles Gibson, 21-year-old student pilot, is slightly injured when his Taylorcraft monoplane crashes into a large tree in the backyard of his home at 1004 S. Lincoln Ave. in one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in Salem. He was flying low over his home, making a sharp turn and waving to his father when he crashed.

Mildred Kariher, champion Youngstown district speller, and her mother, Mrs. Harry Kariher of New Middletown, leave for Washington where Mildred will compete in the national bee.