Years Ago

Today is Sunday, May 31, the 151st day of 2015. There are 214 days left in the year.

Associated Press

On this date in:

1790: President George Washington signs into law the first U.S. copyright act.

1889: Some 2,200 people in Johnstown, Pa., perish when the South Fork Dam holding back Lake Conemaugh collapses.

1910: The Union of South Africa is founded.

1935: Movie studio 20th Century Fox is created through a merger of the Fox Film Corp. and Twentieth Century Pictures.

1949: Former State Department official and accused spy Alger Hiss goes on trial in New York, charged with perjury (the jury deadlocked, but Hiss was convicted in a second trial).

1962: Former Nazi official Adolf Eichmann is hanged in Israel for his role in the Holocaust.

1977: The trans-Alaska oil pipeline, three years in the making, is completed.

1985: Eighty-eight people are killed and more than 1,000 injured when 41 tornadoes sweep through parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York and Ontario, Canada, during an eight-hour period.

1990: The NBC situation comedy “Seinfeld” begins airing as a regular series.

2005: Breaking a silence of 30 years, former FBI official W. Mark Felt steps forward as “Deep Throat,” the secret Washington Post source during the Watergate scandal.

2014: Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the only American soldier held prisoner in Afghanistan, is freed by the Taliban in exchange for five Afghan detainees from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: Michael Antonoff, treasurer of “Fairness in Taxation,” says his group is seeking 25,000 signatures to place a measure on the ballot rescinding the creation of the Mill Creek Metropolitan Park District and the countywide tax that supports it.

Commercial Intertech Corp. reports earnings in the second quarter fell 25 percent from the same period a year earlier.

East Liverpool police shoot and kill a black bear that wandered into a residential district in the center of the city. The bear had been treed by a dog on St. Clair Avenue.

1975: A 32-year-old Ravenna man and 16-year-old Warren youth are charged in the robbery-murder of Joseph Zarnick, 61, of Youngstown, whose body was found in the trunk of his abandoned car on Warren’s South Side.

The Rev. D Gary Schreckengost is installed as pastor of Living Lord Lutheran Church in Canfield.

Youngstown Kitchens, makers of steel sinks and cabinets, is moving its manufacturing plant from Columbiana County to the Lederer Terminal in Youngstown.

1965: U.S. Rep. Michael J. Kirwan of Youngstown, realizing Washington, D.C., tourist points of interest close at 5 p.m., uses his influence to get the Smithsonian, Capitol, National Art Gallery and Library of Congress to stay open until 10 p.m. April through August.

Lawrence E. Anderson of Campbell enters the U.S. Naval Academy. He didn’t have a congressional appointment, but his high grades on the entrance exam won him acceptance.

About 80 boys register to compete in the Youngstown Soap Box Derby, promising one of the largest local derbies.

1940: Clayton Sallade, a clerk at a dairy store at 3632 Market St., disarms a 38-year-old bandit, hits him over the head with his own gun and holds him until police arrive.

Many Youngstown residents are among 15,000 attending the final ceremonies of the Fourth Cleveland Diocesan Eucharistic Congress at Fawcett Stadium in Canton.

Phillip Murray, chairman of the Steel Workers Organizing committee, will be honored June 16 when SWOC lodges of the Mahoning Valley hold a picnic at Berkley Woods.