YEARS AGO FOR MAY 21

Today is Tuesday, May 21, the 141st day of 2019. There are 224 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1542: Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto dies while searching for gold along the Mississippi River.

1863: The Seventh-day Adventist Church is officially organized.

1868: Ulysses S. Grant is nominated for president by the Republican national convention in Chicago.

1881: Clara Barton founds the American Red Cross.

1927: Charles A. Lindbergh lands his Spirit of St. Louis monoplane near Paris, completing the first solo airplane flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 331/2 hours.

1932: Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean as she lands in Northern Ireland, about 15 hours after leaving Newfoundland.

1945: Actors Humphrey Bogart, 45, and Lauren Bacall, 20, are married at Malabar Farm in Lucas, Ohio.

1991: Former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi is assassinated during national elections by a suicide bomber.

2018: Syria’s military captures an enclave in southern Damascus from Islamic State militants after a monthlong battle, bringing the entire capital and its suburbs under full government control for the first time since the civil war began in 2011.

VINDICATOR FILES

1994: State Rep. Robert F. Hagan calls for an investigation of a Youngstown political action committee that he said funneled thousands in donations from Vern Riffe, House speaker, to Hagan’s May 3 primary opponent.

A 9-foot, double-barreled anti-aircraft gun has been installed at the Canfield War Vet Museum on East Main Street, but City Manager Charles Tieche says several residents have complained that the gun is inappropriate in a residential neighborhood.

Eva Mastromatteo, a sophomore at Austintown Fitch High School, captures the Optimist Ohio oratorical crown in Columbus.

1979: William R. Shranko, former administrative assistant to Mayor Phillip Richley, wins the Greater Youngstown AFL-CIO PAC’s endorsement for mayor. City Clerk George Vukovich has the endorsement of the Democratic Party.

Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 87 ratifies a new three-year contract, ending a 13-day strike by 520 union members.

The U.S. Economic Development Administration promises $25 million to $30 million in loan guarantees for Commuter Aircraft Corp., which wants to build an $86 million plant at the Youngstown Municipal Airport, which would employ 1,400 people building 44-passenger turbo-prop airliners.

1969: Boardman Township trustees approve a zone change that clears the way for construction of a multimillion dollar commercial, apartment and residential complex at the site of Southern Airways on the south side of Route 224 west of Hitchcock Road.

G. Stanley Kreiler, chief deputy sheriff of Mahoning County tells the Crime Clinic of Greater Youngstown that the CIA has had proof since the 1930s that “the Communists have a master plan to create chaos in the United States by discrediting the police.”

Six children are injured slightly when a Volkswagen bus in which they were passengers turned over in Mt. Everett Road at Lewis-Seifert Road in Liberty Township.

Grover Yaus, 84, former Rayen School music director and former music supervisor in Youngstown public schools, dies of a heart attack at his home in Phoenix, Ariz.

1944: Glenn G. Shearer, 9, of Lisbon, drowns while swimming in a pool formed by a coal stripping mine near his home. His body was recovered by his father, George Shearer.

Youngstowners turned their clothes closets inside out, emptied their bureau drawers and gave some 100,000 pounds of good wearable clothing to the Russian War Relief.