YEARS AGO
years ago
Today is Friday, May 27, the 148th day of 2016. There are 218 days left in the year.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
On this date in:
1896: Two hundred fifty-five people are killed when a tornado strikes St. Louis, Mo., and East St. Louis, Ill.
1935: The U.S. Supreme Court, in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, unanimously strikes down the National Industrial Recovery Act, a key component of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” legislative program.
1941: The British Royal Navy sinks the German battleship Bismarck off France with a loss of some 2,000 lives, three days after the Bismarck sank the HMS Hood with the loss of more than 1,400 lives. Amid rising world tensions, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaims an “unlimited national emergency” during a radio address from the White House.
1962: A dump fire in Centralia, Pa., ignites a blaze in underground coal deposits that continues to burn to this day.
1964: Independent India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, dies.
1998: Michael Fortier, the government’s star witness in the Oklahoma City bombing case, is sentenced to 12 years in prison after apologizing for not warning anyone about the deadly plot. (Fortier was freed in January 2006.)
2011: Astronauts Mike Fincke and Gregory Chamitoff make history as the final spacewalkers of NASA’s 30-year shuttle program, completing construction of the International Space Station with the smooth addition of an extension pole.
2015: The U.S. government launches an attack on what it called deep-seated and brazen corruption in soccer’s global governing body, FIFA, indicting 14 influential figures on charges of racketeering and taking bribes.
VINDICATOR FILES
1991: Niles Law Director Terrence Dull says a citizens’ committee is drafting legislation that, if passed, would give Niles the toughest regulation and inspection regimen for drilling and operating gas wells in the state.
Robert Patton, retired vice chairman of the board of Integra Financial Corp. of Pittsburgh, will step down as chairman of the Westminster College Board of Trustees to take over a $35-million fundraising drive for the college.
The Mahoning County summer food program is reaching out to more children, adding seven sites to the 42 that operated throughout the county in 1990.
1976: An ordinance aimed at prohibiting the sale of cheap handguns in Youngstown is tabled by city council in the face of a show of pubic opposition and the absence of its primary backer, Mayor Jack C. Hunter, on the night the bill came to the floor.
Youngstown City Council delays the sale of the old Tod Hotel south of Federal Plaza to International Leased Housing Community Urban Redevelopment Corp., which has proposed building a 16-story apartment building for the elderly on the site.
President Gerald Ford endorses a bill that would mean a major expansion of a uranium enrichment plant near Piketon, Ohio.
1966: Three regular state highway patrolmen from the Canfield Post plus a four-man “white-car squad” will work round-the-clock in an effort to curtail Memorial Day weekend traffic accidents. It’s the most-extensive holiday coverage the county has ever had.
Attendance of several Youngstown councilmen at the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Dallas is approved. Attending will be Herman “Pete” Starks, James Pastore, Corry Dama and John V. McCarthy, plus city clerk Mario D’Alesio.
1941: Joan Kohler, 12-year-old New Middletown girl who represented The Vindicator, places fourth in the national spelling bee. She fell in the 26th round on the word “encroachment.”
Mary Elizabeth Campbell of Girard is appointed senior nature counselor for the Youngstown District Camp Fire Girls Camp at Negley.