YEARS AGO FOR MAY 7

Today is Sunday, May 7, the 127th day of 2017. There are 238 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1789: America’s first inaugural ball takes place in New York in honor of President George Washington, who’d taken the oath of office a week earlier.

1824: Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 9 in D minor,” Op. 125, has its premiere in Vienna.

1847: The American Medical Association organizes in Philadelphia.

1914: The U.S. Congress establishes the holiday of Mother’s Day.

1915: A German U-boat torpedoes and sinks the British liner RMS Lusitania off the southern coast of Ireland, killing 1,198 people, including 128 Americans, out of the nearly 2,000 on board.

1939: Germany and Italy announce a military and political alliance known as the Rome-Berlin Axis.

1941: Glenn Miller and His Orchestra record “Chattanooga Choo Choo” for RCA Victor.

1942: U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright goes on a Manila radio station to announce the Allies’ surrender of the Philippines to Japanese forces during World War II.

1945: Germany signs an unconditional surrender at Allied headquarters in Rheims, France, ending its role in World War II.

1954: The 55-day Battle of Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam ends with Vietnamese insurgents overrunning French forces.

1963: The United States launches the Telstar 2 communications satellite.

1975: President Gerald R. Ford formally declares an end to the “Vietnam era.” In Ho Chi Minh City – formerly Saigon – the Viet Cong celebrate its takeover.

2007: President George W. Bush welcomes Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II to the White House, drawing laughter when he mistakenly starts to say that the queen had previously helped the U.S. celebrate its bicentennial in “17...,” then quickly corrected himself to say “1976.”

Six Muslim immigrants from the former Yugoslavia and the Middle East are arrested and accused of plotting to massacre U.S. soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J. (Five were later convicted in federal court of conspiring to kill military personnel; the sixth was charged only with gun offenses, and pleaded guilty.)

Yahweh Ben Yahweh, a former cult leader in Miami linked to nearly two dozen gruesome killings in the 1980s, dies at age 71.

2012: Education Secretary Arne Duncan breaks ranks with the White House, stating his unequivocal support for same-sex marriage a day after Vice President Joe Biden said on NBC that he was “absolutely comfortable” with gay couples marrying.

Vladimir Putin takes the oath of office as Russia’s president for the next six years in a brief but regal Kremlin ceremony.

2016: A Tesla Model S sedan that was in self-driving mode crashes into the side of a tractor-trailer in Williston, Fla., killing its occupant, Joshua D. Brown.

Convicted drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who twice pulled off brazen jailbreaks, is transferred to a prison in northern Mexico near the Texas border.

President Barack Obama tells the graduating class at Howard University in Washington, D.C., that the country was “a better place today” than when he left college more than 30 years earlier, but acknowledges that gaps persisted, citing racism and inequality.

A single ticket purchased in New Jersey wins a Powerball jackpot worth $429.6 million.

Nyquist wins the Kentucky Derby by 11/4 lengths, finishing in 2:01.31.

VINDICATOR FILES

1992: Universal-Rundle Corp., a maker of bathroom fixtures, will receive $900,000 in loans from New Castle and the state of Pennsylvania to upgrade its Taylor Township plant and preserve 300 jobs there.

Stephen Pressley, president of the Youngstown Area Urban League, says city officials should stop procrastinating and find the money to fund the city’s fledgling police/community review board or it risks the kind of civil unrest being seen in other cities.

Documents that would transfer control of the Youngstown Municipal Airport from the city to a port authority will be submitted to the Federal Aviation Administration for its approval.

1977: Youngstown is one of four Ohio cities picked by Universal Pictures for filming “The Deer Hunter,” a movie starring Academy Award winner Robert De Niro. The other cities are Mingo Junction, Steubenville and Cleveland.

Republic Steel Corp., the nation’s fourth largest steel maker, takes the lead in boosting prices, announcing increases of 6.8 percent on hot-rolled and cold-finished bars and 8.8 percent on flat-rolled products.

Imported car sales in April set a record of 206,200 units, up 65 percent from a year earlier.

1967: A spokesman for the teaching staff of South High School says that court leniency does as much to destroy discipline as any one factor.

Kathleen Lyden, spelling champion at St. Patrick’s Glenwood School, will go to Washington, D.C., to compete for the national title after defeating 149 other school winners in The Vindicator’s 34th annual spelling bee.

The Board of Nursing Education and Nurse Registration of Ohio gives preliminary approval to an associate degree in nursing program at Youngstown University.

1942: A $500,000 expansion program, to include construction of a huge new plant addition, an office and two large parking lots is announced by Commercial Shearing & Stamping Co.

Patricia Bennett and Laird Eckman have the leading roles in “What a Life”, a comedy presented by the Boardman High School senior class.

Youngstown Mayor William Spagnola is appointed by Gov. John Bricker to the state civilian defense evacuation committee. It will plan for evacuating civilians in the case of an air raid.