YEARS AGO FOR MAY 8

Today is Monday, May 8, the 128th day of 2017. There are 237 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1541: Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto reaches the Mississippi River.

1794: Antoine Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry, is executed on the guillotine during France’s Reign of Terror.

1915: Regret becomes the first filly to win the Kentucky Derby.

1958: Vice President Richard Nixon is shoved, stoned, booed and spat upon by anti-American demonstrators in Lima, Peru.

1945: President Harry S. Truman announces on radio that Nazi Germany’s forces have surrendered, and that “the flags of freedom fly all over Europe.”

1987: Gary Hart, dogged by questions about his personal life, including his relationship with Miami model Donna Rice, withdraws from the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

2012: North Carolina voters decide overwhelmingly to strengthen their state’s gay marriage ban.

VINDICATOR FILES

1992: The average Mahoning County resident would pay between $5 and $7 a year for emergency 911 service under a plan to bring the service to the county.

Mercer County commissioners vote to join the consortium put together to help finance the construction of a $40 million continuous steel caster at the Sharon Steel Corp. plant in Farrell.

The Cafaro Co. is building the Ashtabula Mall on state Route 20 just east of state Route 11. It will be about the size of Eastwood Mall and contain Phar-Mor, J.C. Penney, Sears and Kmart stores, plus a theater.

1977: Thiel College in Greenville, Pa., gets an unrestricted gift of $500,000 from the estate of Pittsburgh attorney John C. Bane Jr., a longtime supporter of the college.

The Youngstown Symphony Orchestra brings down the curtain on its successful 50th anniversary season with a varied program involving 300 singers and instrumentalists.

Gov. James A. Rhodes announces the appointment of Edgar Giddens, a supervisor at the General Motors Assembly Division at Lordstown and a lifelong Youngstown resident, as a member of the board of trustees of Youngstown State University. He succeeds Dr. Bertie B. Burrowes.

Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., a division of Lykes, joins Republic Steel Corp. in raising prices on its products.

1967: Joseph C. Santillo, All-City center at East High School, has been appointed to the United States Naval Academy.

Fifteen-year-old Morris McClentic of Liberty Road is roughed up by 15 to 20 boys in the picnic ground at Idora Park.

Pleasant Grove United Presbyterian Church elects the Rev. Harold W. Bowman of Monaca, Pa., to succeed the Rev. Dr. Don P. Montgomery as pastor.

Twenty-six workers at the Columbiana County Sheltered Workshop for the Retarded take a field trip to Gettysburg, Pa.

More than an inch of rain is recorded overnight, sending the Meander Reservoir water level above the flashboards. Engineer Donald Heffelfinger says 400 million gallons a day bubble over the spillway into the Mahoning River.

1942: Atty. Walter Lyon, brother of Common Pleas Judge J.H.C Lyon, is the attorney for Gamaly Products of Los Angeles, which has been formed to manufacture synthetic rubber form California crude oil.

The last remaining bottleneck on widened Market Street is eliminated as a half-block of Wayne Avenue is open to traffic. This completes the $1 million bridge-widening project begun in 1939.

George Opritza, former Youngstowner, and his wife, Aurelia, are among the 14 Ohioans being held in Axis countries who will be returned to this country aboard the liner Drotininghold.