YEARS AGO

Today is Sunday, May 3, the 123rd day of 2015. There are 242 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1802: Washington, D.C., is incorporated as a city.

1916: Irish nationalist Padraic Pearse and two others are executed by the British for their roles in the Easter Rising.

1933: Nellie T. Ross becomes the first female director of the U.S. Mint.

1945: During World War II, Allied forces recapture Rangoon (Yangon) from the Japanese.

1952: The Kentucky Derby is televised nationally for the first time on CBS; the winner is Hill Gail.

1960: The Harvey Schmidt-Tom Jones musical “The Fantasticks” begins a nearly 42-year run at New York’s Sullivan Street Playhouse.

1975: America’s oldest operational aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz, is commissioned.

1986: In NASA’s first post-Challenger launch, an unmanned Delta rocket loses power in its main engine shortly after liftoff, forcing safety officers to destroy it by remote control.

1999: Some 70 tornadoes roar across Oklahoma and Kansas, killing 46 people and injuring hundreds.

2005: The first democratically elected government in Iraq is sworn in.

2010: BP declares it will pay all “legitimate and objectively verifiable” claims related to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

2014: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, during a visit to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, says the U.S. is ready to help increase its ties with Africa, but that nations across the continent needs to take stronger steps to ensure security and democracy for its people.

California Chrome pulls away down the stretch for a dominant win at the 140th Kentucky Derby.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: Neither Fred H. Bailey nor Beth A. Smith has a lock on the Democratic nomination for the Common Pleas judgeship being vacated by Elwyn V. Jenkins, The Vindicator’s poll shows, and the race between the two county court judges is expected to go down to the wire.

John A. Saunders, who left GF Corp. in 1973 after 13 years as its president and CEO, writes a letter to GF President Ronald W. Myers complaining that “hundreds of former and active GF’ers who worked and struggled to make GF the leader and largest office furniture manufacturer in the industry are now left hanging in midair as the company folds” and they lose their health and life insurance.

A majority of Youngstown City Council members say they support replacing the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division with an independent review board that would investigation allegations of police misconduct.

1975: Eight children who came to the United States from Jordan in 1972 to join their father, Hasan Ali Nassar, a General Motors Lordstown employee, are among 59 people from 21 countries sworn in as new citizens by Common Pleas Judge John J. Leskovyansky.

The Youngstown Board of Control leases for retail development the ground floor of the Federal Plaza Parking Facility to Richard Mills, developer of City Centre I. Mills says he has letters of interest from a copying and printing service, a florist and Rexall drugs.

The Rev. Edward Stanton, director of Human Development-Social Action for the Youngs-town Diocese, tells a meeting of the Fellowship of Churchwomen United of Youngstown, that money for a proposed stadium downtown would be better spent to aid the city’s hungry, poor and poorly housed children.

1965: A memorial to Louis H. Hole, a cross, is dedicated at Clarkson United Presbyterian Church.

A high temperature of 84 degrees set a record for May 2 in Youngstown, toppling the 1952 record the O’Briend Club.of 82.

The Youngstown Post Office is conducting training programs in schools in grades 4 through 8 to acquaint pupils with the new ZIP code.

1940: “I don’t like war, but if the question of turning this country into a totalitarian nation ever arises, you’ll find me in the front ranks fighting against it, “ Associated Press foreign correspondent Melvin K. Whiteleather tells 500 students at Youngstown College.

Youngstown district coal consumers, industrial and domestic, will have to pay millions of dollars a year more for their fuel if prices recommended by examiners of the bituminous coal division of the Department of Interior are upheld, writes The Vindicator’s Ernest N. Nemenyi.

The Presbyterian Church in Columbiana, which was organized May 13, 1865, is celebrating its 75th anniversary. The Rev. J.K. McDivitt is the pastor.