YEARS AGO FOR MAY 15

Today is Monday, May 15, the 135th day of 2017. There are 230 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1776: Virginia authorizes its delegation to the Continental Congress to support independence from Britain.

1911: The U.S. Supreme Court rules that Standard Oil Co. is a monopoly in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, and ordered its breakup.

1942: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs a measure creating the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, whose members come to be known as WACs.

1970: Just after midnight, Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green, two black students at Jackson State College in Mississippi, are killed as police open fire during student protests.

1972: Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace is shot and left paralyzed by Arthur H. Bremer while campaigning for president in Laurel, Md. (Bremer served 35 years for attempted murder.)

2007: The Rev. Jerry Falwell, who built the Christian right into a political force, dies in Lynchburg, Va., at age 73.

VINDICATOR FILES

1992: A Wellsville woman, Delores A. Staley, files a $2 million lawsuit in Columbiana County Common Pleas Court saying she was fired for refusing to stock and sell adult-oriented magazines at the Dairy Mart store.

The Boardman Township Zoning Commission votes 3-2 to deny a zone change that would have allowed the former Boardman branch of the library at 7227 Glenwood Ave. to be converted into office space.

The Ohio State Bar Association honors five lawyers from Mahoning and Trumbull counties during its annual banquet in Columbus. Honored for 65 years in practice was D.J. Lapolla of Niles, and for 50 years: James R. MacQueen of Niles, Albert W. Marowitz of Warren, and Solomon Malkoff and John M. Newman, both of Liberty, who practice in Youngstown. .

1977: Lori Skarbinski, an eighth-grader at St. Luke School in Boardman, is crowned grand champion at the 44th annual Vindicator Spelling Bee. A St. Luke student has won the bee in four of the last five years.

Mrs. Carla Blair drops her two children, Isaac, 4, and Danielle, 18 months, from a second-floor window of her apartment to waiting police officers during a 26-hour standoff with a bank robber who entered her East Side apartment. The robber surrendered after Mrs. Blair managed to escape.

John White, president of Ohio Edison, defends President Jimmy Carter’s national energy program as “an important step forward” in meeting the nation’s energy crisis.

1967: The Army Commendation Medal and the Purple Heart are awarded posthumously to Pfc. John J. Bentfield, 23, who was killed in action Feb. 2 in Vietnam.

Stephen Loree of Cranbrook Drive receives his Eagle Scout Award at a court of honor at First United Presbyterian Church.

United Construction Co., Mahoning Avenue, wins a major contract to construct foundations and footings for a new General Motors plant near Martinsburg, W. Va.

1942: Simon Leis, recently named special assistant prosecutor of Hamilton County, agrees to represent Attorney General Thomas J. Herbert in conducting a special grand jury investigation of vice and rackets in Mahoning County.

Atty. Bruce Black and Leonard Simons are elected air-raid sector chiefs for Boardman Township.

Local retail businesses are feeling the impact of wartime conditions with curtailed deliveries and the preparation for new retail price ceilings.