YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

Today is Saturday, May 14, the 135th day of 2016. There are 231 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1796: English physician Edward Jenner inoculates 8-year-old James Phipps against smallpox by using cowpox matter.

1804: The Lewis and Clark expedition to explore the Louisiana Territory as well as the Pacific Northwest leaves camp near present-day Hartford, Ill.

1940: The Netherlands surrenders to invading German forces during World War II.

1948: According to the current-era calendar, the independent state of Israel is proclaimed in Tel Aviv.

1955: Representatives from eight Communist bloc countries, including the Soviet Union, sign the Warsaw Pact in Poland. (The pact was dissolved in 1991.)

1961: Freedom Riders are attacked by violent mobs in Anniston and Birmingham, Ala.

1998: Singer-actor Frank Sinatra dies at a Los Angeles hospital at age 82.

2006: Mexico’s President Vicente Fox telephones President George W. Bush to express concern about what he calls the possibility of a “militarized” U.S.-Mexican border, a day before Bush’s planned Oval Office speech on immigration.

2006: At New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund and potential candidate for president of France, is removed from a Paris-bound plane and charged with sexually assaulting a Manhattan hotel maid, Nafissatou Diallo. (Strauss-Kahn later resigned; the charges against him were eventually dropped.)

2015: President Barack Obama, at a Camp David summit, assures Arab allies they are safe from the threat of an empowered Iran, pledging an “ironclad commitment” to the Sunni governments of the Persian Gulf.

VINDICATOR FILES

1991: A private contractor hired by White Metal Stamping, owners of property near Meander Reservoir where barrels alleged to contain toxic chemicals are buried, starts an initial cleanup under the watchful eye of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.

Youngstown is averaging a homicide every 51/2 days in 1991, and at that rate will have more than 60 homicides by the end of the year.

The Vindicator files a lawsuit against the Brookfield Township Board of Trustees alleging that the board has been violating Ohio’s open-meetings law by conducting secret sessions.

1976: Mahoning County Sheriff Ray T. Davis becomes the first sheriff of a major county in Ohio to grant civil-service protection to deputies after signing an agreement with the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association.

The Youngstown Hospital Association will build a new $9.2 million surgical wing at North Side Hospital.

Clifford Cavender, 59, of Warren, a heavy-equipment operator for the city of Warren, says he’ll retire after winning the Ohio lottery’s top prize of $1,000 a month for life.

1966: The Columbiana County Community College Board of Trustees says it has no plans to join Mahoning County in developing a community college.

The Salem Board of Education will hire an architect to develop a plan to replace the 70-year-old Fourth Street School, which has been declared unsafe by the Ohio Division of Factory and Building Inspection.

1941: The “help wanted” ads and signs displayed prominently of late mean what they say: Youngstown is experiencing an acute shortage of workers.

Uncle Sam’s federal food-stamp program, designed to benefit more than 6,000 families in the county, besides bringing an estimated $500,0000 in business to the local food industry, will be inaugurated in June.

Charles E. Gallagher, widely known East Ohio Gas Co. official, is retiring as chairman of the board of the company, one day before his 65th birthday. He closes 48 years in the natural-gas industry.