YEARS AGO

Today is Thursday, May 7, the 127th day of 2015. 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.

1824: Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, has its premiere in Vienna.

1915: In an incident that sparks international outrage, a German U-boat torpedoes and sinks the British liner RMS Lusitania off the southern coast of Ireland, killing 1,198 people, including 128 Americans, out of the nearly 2,000 on board.

1928: The minimum voting age for British women is lowered from 30 to 21 — the same age as men.

1939: Germany and Italy announce a military and political alliance known as the Rome-Berlin Axis.

1942: U.S. Army Gen. Jonathan Wainwright goes on a Manila radio station to announce the Allied surrender of the Philippines to Japanese forces during World War II.

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.

1963: The United States launches the Telstar 2 communications satellite.

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

1992: The latest addition to America’s space shuttle fleet, Endeavour, goes on its first flight.

A 203-year-old proposed constitutional amendment barring Congress from giving itself a midterm pay raise received enough votes for ratification as Michigan became the 38th state to approve it.

1995: Jacques Chirac, the conservative mayor of Paris, wins France’s presidency in his third attempt, defeating Lionel Jospin in a runoff to end 14 years of Socialist rule.

2010: A BP-chartered vessel lowers a 100-ton concrete-and-steel vault onto the ruptured Deep- water Horizon well in an unprecedented, and ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to stop most of the gushing crude fouling the sea.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: Gorant Candies Inc., founded in Youngs-town in 1949, plans to move its Boardman manufacturing operation to Norwalk and its company headquarters to Cleveland by June 1991.

Bob LaRicca is named boys basketball coach for the Warren G. Harding High School when the school opens in the fall as a consolidation of Harding and Western Reserve high schools.

Over 600 people attend the East High School Hall of Fame banquet at Mr. Anthony’s honoring 24 former athletes as new members.

1975: What started as a joy ride for two East Side juveniles in a stolen car ends after a high-speed chase from New Castle to the Lincoln Knolls Plaza in which five cars were demolished, including a Youngstown police cruiser and an unmarked Pennsylvania State Police car.

U.S. Sen. Robert A. Taft announces that Youngstown has been awarded a $3.73 million grant by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Dr. George Beelen, assistant professor of history at Youngstown State University, is re-elected president of the Youngstown Chapter of the United Nations Association.

1965: An agreement settling 59 local issues ends a six-day strike by USW Local 2243 that idled 2,700 hourly employees at Copperweld Steel Co. in Warren.

The Youngstown Sheet & Tube and Inland Steel companies join in a multimillion dollar anti-smoke control installation at Indiana Harbor plants in East Chicago, Ill.

Don McKay, president of Boardman Board of Education, tells a meeting of 50 civic and business leaders a bond issue will be on the November ballot to build a new high school that would include a swimming pool for use by public as well as the students.

1940: Robert Beverly, 6, drowns after falling from a raft in a small pond near the Campbell city dump. His companion Mike Vodhanel, 16, was saved by Mike Hange, 14, a Boy Scout who saw the raft overturn.

Billie Rosemary Schulte, 5, dies of injuries after being run over by her father’s truck in the driveway of the family home at 2551 Cornwall Ave., Youngstown. The father drove away, unaware of the accident.

Dr. Charles Scofield, Struthers health commissioner and school physician, asks the Board of Education to seek a repeal by city council of an ordinance licensing marble boards in the city. He says the marble boards are not games of skill, but gambling devices sold or rented by known racketeers.