YEARS AGO FOR MAY 31

May 31, 2019 at 12:00a.m.

Today is Friday, May 31, the 151st day of 2019. There are 214 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1859: The Big Ben clock tower in London goes into operation, chiming for the first time.

1889: Some 2,200 people in Johnstown, Pa., perish when the South Fork Dam collapses, sending 20 million tons of water rushing through the town.

1921: A race riot erupts in Tulsa, Okla., as white mobs begin looting and leveling the affluent black district of Greenwood; hundreds die.

1962: Former Nazi official Adolf Eichmann is hanged in Israel a few minutes before midnight for his role in the Holocaust.

1970: A magnitude 7.9 earthquake in Peru claims an estimated 67,000 lives.

1985: Eighty-eight people are killed, more than 1,000 injured, when 41 tornadoes sweep through parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York and Ontario, Canada. In the Mahoning Valley, Niles and Newton Falls were hit particularly hard.

1990: The situation comedy “Seinfeld” debuts as a regular series on NBC.

2018: The Trump administration imposes tariffs on steel and aluminum from Europe, Mexico and Canada in a move that draws immediate vows of retaliation.

VINDICATOR FILES

1994: Jackie Lucarell of Girard places third in the Parents of Champions Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C. Her 12-year-old son, Billy, a sixth-grader at Tod Woods School and winner of The Vindicator Spelling Bee, is in Washington to compete in the Scripps Howard National Bee.

Campbell City Council is considering legislation to tax any resident’s state lottery winnings at 1.5 percent.

In its final report, the Mahoning County grand jury criticizes some police officers who appeared before it for being unprepared and said others showed a lack of respect by ignoring subpoenas.

1979: Trumbull County Commissioner Walter Pestrak says the Western Reserve Economic Development Agency is “collapsing” and losing access to federal funds. William Sullivan, executive director, says the agency is reorganizing.

Dr. Ronald Overfield, superintendent of the public schools of Perrysburg outside Toledo, is named superintendent of Boardman Local School District on a three-year contract paying $35,600.

William B. Saxbe, a native Ohioan who has served as U.S. attorney general and ambassador to India, will speak at the 57th annual spring commencement of Youngstown State University.

1969: The Youngstown Council of Churches and the Catholic Dioceses of Youngstown agree to employ a second-year theology student at St. Mary Seminary to serve as a full-time chaplain for thousands of Catholic and Protestant Boy Scouts who will be at Camp Stambaugh for eight weeks this summer.

Opening the Kenley Players season in Warren is Dean Jones, starring in “How Now, Dow Jones.”

The peace and quiet of a residential South Side neighborhood is shattered when dynamite explodes on the porch of a home at 262 Hilton Ave. occupied by Joseph Pignatelli, his wife and small child. Three men were apprehended.

The battlefields of Vietnam seemed a bit closer to the crowd of 15,000 that lined downtown Youngstown streets for an hour-long Memorial Day parade.

1944: Seventy-six years after veterans of the Civil War were first honored on Memorial Day, more than 25,000 people line downtown Youngstown streets to honor the dead of four wars.

Capt. Natalie Reebel, daughter of Atty. and Mrs. R. Gordon Reebel, has been named staff director for WAC personnel in the South Pacific headquarters.

Federal narcotics agents stage their second raid in a month on marijuana dens in the city, arresting three women and a man.