YEARS AGO FOR MAY 5

Today is Friday, May 5, the 125th day of 2017. There are 240 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1494: During his second voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus lands in Jamaica.

1821: Napoleon Bonaparte, 51, dies in exile on the island of St. Helena.

1862: Mexican troops defeat French occupying forces in the Battle of Puebla.

1955: West Germany becomes a fully sovereign state.

1961: Astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr. becomes America’s first space traveler as he makes a 15-minute suborbital flight aboard Mercury capsule Freedom 7.

1973: Secretariat wins the Kentucky Derby, the first of his Triple Crown victories.

2012: Five Guantanamo Bay prisoners, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, are arraigned in a proceeding that dragged on for 13 hours due to stalling tactics by the defendants.

2016: President Barack Obama commutes the prison sentences of 58 federal convicts, part of a broader push to ease punishments for nonviolent drug offenders.

VINDICATOR FILES

1992: James R. Cataland, president of the Austintown-based Arthur Treacher’s Inc., says the company has opened 20 restaurants in the past eight months and will open 11 more by the end of June. The chain has 112 stores.

Officials in Hubbard and West Middlesex discover a major natural-gas leak after a truck carrying the chemical that gives gas its distinctive odor spills three gallons on Hubbard streets. Among the evacuations undertaken until the problem was identified was that of West Middlesex schools.

Harry Syak, president of Syro Steel Co. in Girard, says a letter of intent has been signed for Syro to be acquired by Trinity Industries of Dallas, a rail-car builder and steel fabricator.

1977: Fires deliberately set in a third-floor classroom at Boardman Center Middle School cause $5,000 in damage and force evacuation of students in the first and second floors of the north wing.

A young bandit wearing a knit cap scoops up an undisclosed amount of cash during a robbery at the Towne Mall Branch of the People’s Bank in New Castle.

The manager and assistant manager of the West Side Drive-In Theater, 6100 Mahoning Ave., are arrested by Austintown police on charges of presenting materials harmful to juveniles. Police said the theater showed X-rated films that were being watched by teenagers parked in the Austintown Plaza lot east of the theater.

1967: A resolution adopted by the Mayor’s Human Relations Committee says averting racial crisis in Youngstown in the near future may depend on the actions of the Board of Education, law enforcement and the press.

The Youngstown Mayor’s Human Relations Commission continues its investigation into the role that Realtors played in “blockbusting” on Catalina Avenue after two black people moved into the neighborhood.

The Salem Board of Education will need to hire about 25 teachers for the 1967-68 school year. Seven teachers have resigned, eight are expected to retire and more teachers will be needed for vocational education programs.

1942: Retailers sell their first pound of sugar since April 27 to housewives who got their sugar stamps. This stamp enables them to buy a pound of sugar during a 12-day period.

Three different designs for a new span over Mill Creek on Old Furnace Road are proposed to county commissioners: rigid frame, arch or continuous girder.