YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

Today is Friday, May 6, the 127th day of 2016. There are 239 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1889: The Paris Exposition formally opens, featuring the just-completed Eiffel Tower.

1891: Electrician Irwin “Ike” H. Hoover begins installing the first electrical wiring in the White House during the administration of President Benjamin Harrison. (Hoover ended up being offered a full-time job as White House electrician, which he accepted; he later became the White House chief usher.)

1910: Britain’s Edwardian era ends with the death of King Edward VII; he is succeeded by George V.

1935: The Works Progress Administration begins operating under an executive order signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

1937: The hydrogen-filled German airship Hindenburg burns and crashes in Lakehurst, N.J., killing 35 of the 97 people on board and a Navy crewman on the ground.

1941: Josef Stalin assumes the Soviet premiership, replacing Vyacheslav M. Molotov.

Comedian Bob Hope does his first USO show before an audience of servicemen as he broadcasts his radio program from March Field in Riverside, Calif.

1942: During World War II, some 15,000 Americans and Filipinos on Corregidor surrender to Japanese forces.

1954: Medical student Roger Bannister breaks the 4-minute mile during a track meet in Oxford, England, in 3:59.4.

1966: The Rolling Stones single “Paint It, Black” is released in the U.S. by London Records (some sources say May 7).

1981: Yale architecture student Maya Ying Lin is named winner of a competition to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

1994: Former Arkansas state worker Paula Jones files suit against President Bill Clinton, alleging he’d sexually harassed her in 1991. (Jones reached a settlement with Clinton in November 1998.)

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and French President Francois Mitterrand formally open the Channel Tunnel between their countries.

2001: Pope John Paul II, during a visit to Syria, becomes the first pope to enter a mosque as he calls for brotherhood between Christians and Muslims.

2006: A British military helicopter apparently hit by a missile crashes in Basra, Iraq, killing four crew members.

Lillian Gertrud Asplund, the last American survivor of the sinking of the Titanic, dies in Shrewsbury, Mass., at age 99.

2011: Brimming with pride, President Barack Obama meets with the U.S. commandos he’d sent after terror mastermind Osama bin Laden during a visit to Fort Campbell, Ky. Al-Qaida vows to keep fighting the United States and avenge the death of bin Laden, which it acknowledges for the first time in an Internet statement.

2015: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu completes formation of a new governing coalition.

VINDICATOR FILES

1991: A 25-year-old New Castle, Pa., man being held on burglary charges escapes from the Lawrence County Jail by poking a hole in the ceiling with a broom handle and crawling to freedom.

Youngstown Clerk of Courts Rosemary Durkin says her office safe is taking on the look of a pawn shop because Municipal Judge Andrew Polovischak Jr. accepts jewelry in lieu of a cash bond.

Easy Street Productions ends its run of “Pump Boys and Dinettes” after more than 200 performances in Youngstown.

1976: A proposal by Mayor Jack C. Hunter to ban the sale and possession of handguns known as “Saturday night specials” is taken off city council’s agenda to allow it to be combined with a proposal by 7th Ward Councilman John T. Murphy.

Boardman Township trustees reorganize their 34-man police department on the recommendations of Chief Grant L. Hess. The assistant chief position is abolished, leaving a chief, three captains, four sergeants, four detectives, 21 uniformed officers and a plain-clothes officer.

The Youngstown Building Bureau orders the closing of the Nu Game Room at 909 Elm St. for violating plumbing and electrical codes. Neighbors had complained that the business was a nuisance.

1966: A long line of customers crowds the front of Youngstown’s newest Kroger store at 5050 Youngstown-Poland Road. It is the ninth Kroger in the area.

William B. McKelvey is re-elected president of the G.M. McKelvey Co., and Carl W. Ullman, president of the Dollar Savings & Trust Co., is re-elected chairman of the board at the annual shareholders meeting.

Clarence Tolliver, bailiff to Judge Forrest J. Cavalier, is credited with saving the life of a 39-year-old man who tried to commit suicide by jumping from a fourth-floor window of the Mahoning County Courthouse.

1941: Father Edward J. Flanagan of Boys’ Town attends hearings in a half-dozen cases before Judge Henry P. Beckenbach in Mahoning County Juvenile Court. He is accompanied by Msgr. Joseph Trainor and the Rev. George McDonough.

Howard Meehan, 12, of East Park Avenue, Niles, is the new marbles king of Niles and the first finalist to qualify for The Vindicator’s district marble championship matches. He won more than 574 competitors.

Rep. Michael Kirwan wins his fight against Locke Miller when charges brought by Miller alleging that Kirwan had “sold” postmasterships are thrown out by a federal grand jury in Cleveland.