YEARS AGO FOR MAY 24

Today is Thursday, May 24, the 144th day of 2018. There are 221 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1775: John Hancock is unanimously elected President of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, succeeding Peyton Randolph.

1844: Samuel F.B. Morse transmits the message “What hath God wrought” from Washington to Baltimore as he formally opens America’s first telegraph line.

1883: The Brooklyn Bridge, linking Brooklyn and Manhattan, is dedicated by President Chester Alan Arthur and New York Gov. Grover Cleveland.

1958: United Press International was formed through a merger of the United Press and the International News Service.

1980: Iran rejects a call by the World Court in The Hague to release the American hostages.

1994: Four Islamic fundamentalists convicted of bombing New York’s World Trade Center in 1993 are each sentenced to 240 years in prison.

2013: President Barack Obama addresses the sexual-assault epidemic staining the military, telling U.S. Naval Academy graduates to remember their honor depended on what they did when nobody was looking and said the crime had “no place in the greatest military on earth.”

VINDICATOR FILES

1993: Wayne King, owner of King’s Inn Restaurant in Coitsville, marks the 55th anniversary of the restaurant his parents started by rolling back prices for the day to those of 1938. Wayne recalls when he was 9 years old, Roy Rogers stayed at the attached motel. Trigger stayed in a trailer in the parking lot.

Rick Robbins, manager of TGIFriday’s restaurant on Tiffany Boulevard, says a group of young women who stole two trays of plastic dessert replicas valued at $500 were remorseful and called to say they wanted to return the trays.

Bliss-Salem Inc. receives a $3.5 million contract from Allegheny-Ludlum Steel to provide equipment for its Vandergrift, Pa., mill.

1978: The U.S. Economic Development Administration indicates that Youngstown will be one of two Ohio cities eligible for a five-year funding plan for economically disadvantaged areas.

Vindicator Business Editor George Reiss reports that some of the nation’s top steel executives meeting in New York voice pessimism about the Ecumenical Coalition of the Mahoning Valley’s projected plans to revitalize most of the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co.’s partially closed Campbell Works.

Edgar B. Speer, chairman of the U.S. Steel Corp. and chairman of the American Iron and Steel Institute, says the basic steel industry is very close to adapting nuclear energy to solve its energy problems. Speer says it could be developed by the United States, Japan or Germany, “but it will be developed.”

1968: Dr. William H. Bunn Jr. is re-elected president and Twing Hiscox is elected chairman of the board of the Heart Association of Eastern, Ohio.

The Rev. Ira Gamble, pastor of Reed’s Chapel, AME Church, urges Youngstown City Council and the city administration to take immediate action to rid the East Side of blighted housing.

Goodwill Industries will open a $400,000 capital fund campaign in June to help finance a $765,000 relocation program. Goodwill’s headquarters at 330 E. Boardman St. is in the path of Youngstown’s Urban Renewal program.

1943: Harold Hull, assistant county prosecutor, announces he will run as a Republican for mayor of Youngstown without making specific campaign promises, saying “I think the public should get more if it elected officials who did not promise so much.”

Col. Zim E. Lawhon of the Army ground forces is named commanding officer at Shenango Personnel Replacement Depot.

Thomas Morley, 13, son of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Morley, drowns in a deep pool in Mill Creek after slipping from a rock and being swept over Lanterman’s Falls.