YEARS AGO

Today is Monday, May 4, the 124th day of 2015. There are 241 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1776: Rhode Island declares its freedom from England, two months before the Declaration of Independence is adopted.

1866: At Haymarket Square in Chicago, a labor demonstration for an 8-hour work day turns into a deadly riot when a bomb explodes.

1925: An international conference opens in Geneva to forge an agreement against the use of chemical and biological weapons in war; the Geneva Protocol was signed on June 17, 1925, and went into force in 1928.

1932: Mobster Al Capone, convicted of income-tax evasion, enters the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. (Capone was later transferred to Alcatraz Island.)

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: Former Warren City Schools Superintendent Richard A. Boyd returns to the city to speak at the 17th annual scholarship banquet, where he predicts that the turmoil surrounding the consolidation of Warren Western Reserve and Warren G. Harding high schools will quickly disappear.

Backers of a civilian police review board in Youngstown should anticipate opposition from city police and a possible trip to court, says Werner Petterson, director of the International Association of Civil Oversight of Law Enforcement in Chicago.

Shirley and Les McNeal of Champion win $3 million in the Ohio Lotto, playing the numbers 12-19-31-32-40-44.

1975: Ginger Hurajt, an eighth-grader at St. Luke School, wins The Vindicator’s 42nd annual spelling bee on the winning word, “resuscitate.” She is the third successive winner from St. Luke and one of seven champions coached by Sister Miriam at St. Luke and St. Patrick schools.

Joe Brezinski, 15, of 904 E. Dewey Ave., is rescued from Lake Newport after he jumped from a boat and was swept over the 30-foot dam at the north end of the lake. Mill Creek Park policemen Tom Galich and Don Wrench pulled him from the water and gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation until an ambulance arrived.

A temporary transfer of $250,000 from Youngstown State University to the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine will make it possible to break ground earlier for the Basic Medical Science Campus at Rootstown.

1965: Youngstown Welding and Engineering Co. wins a $1 million contract from the Navy Department for nuclear submarine torpedo equipment.

Youngstown Federation of Teachers presents a new salary schedule to the Youngstown Board of Education, calling for a minimum salary of $5,500, an increase of $500, and a maximum of $10,945, an increase of $1,245.

Boardman Police Chief Robert Fink tells township trustees that an increase in crime in the township is due to reductions in police manpower after the resignation of Maynard Moore Jr. and William Huff.

1940: Helen Guterba of New Middletown wins The Vindicator’s annual spelling bee, besting 105 contestants, correctly spelling the final word, “vying.” She is the fourth New Middletown student to win the bee.

Three dismembered bodies are found in three box cars in Pittsburgh, where the cars were being readied to be scrapped. The cars had sat on sidings in Youngstown for 15 months before being moved to Struthers and then Pittsburgh. Youngstown Police Chief John Turnbull suspects the men were vagrants who lived in a settlement at the city incinerator.

A man believed to have been involved in a $300 burglary of King’s Jewelry Store, 248 W. Federal St., is shot and wounded by Campbell police as he walked out of a Campbell beer garden. Police shot him in the legs after he reached into a pocket after being told to put his hands in the air.