Today is Thursday, Dec. 12, the 346th day of 2002. There are 19 days left in the year. On this date

Today is Thursday, Dec. 12, the 346th day of 2002. There are 19 days left in the year. On this date in 1787, Pennsylvania becomes the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
In 1870, Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina becomes the first black lawmaker sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1897, "The Katzenjammer Kids," the pioneering comic strip created by Rudolph Dirks, makes its debut in the New York Journal. In 1913, authorities in Florence, Italy, announce that the "Mona Lisa," stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris in 1911, has been recovered. In 1917, the Rev. Edward Flanagan founds Boys Town outside Omaha, Neb. In 1937, Japanese aircraft sink the U.S. gunboat Panay on China's Yangtze River. (Japan apologizes, and pays $2.2 million in reparations.) In 1947, the United Mine Workers union withdraws from the American Federation of Labor. In 1963, Kenya gains its independence from Britain. In 1975, Sara Jane Moore pleads guilty to a charge of trying to kill President Ford in San Francisco the previous September. In 1985, 248 American soldiers and eight crew members are killed when an Arrow Air charter crashes after takeoff from Gander, Newfoundland. In 2000, a divided U.S. Supreme Court reverses a state court decision for recounts in Florida's contested election, effectively transforming George W. Bush into the president-elect.
December 12, 1977: Economists from Washington and religious leaders from Youngstown join forces in an ambitious scheme to turn the Youngstown Sheet & amp; Tube Campbell Works into a showcase of modern employee ownership.
Anne Melnick, a senior at Boardman High School, is the winner of the 31st annual Mahoning County Voice of Democracy essay contest sponsored by the VFW.
The Supreme Court rules that federal law prohibiting age discrimination does not protect some 11 million workers from being forced to retire before they reach age 65. The suit was brought by a United Airlines mechanic who was forced to retire at age 60.
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December 12, 1962: General Fireproofing Co. will transfer the job of producing chairs to its planned new plant at Forest City, N.C., and will increase its multiple run business space made available at its Youngstown plant, says President John A. Saunders.
Youngstown's record of 65 days without a traffic fatality ends with a violent head-on collision between two autos in McGuffey Road near Stewart Ave. Oliver L. Catlin, 54, dies and two other men are seriously injured.
A former Youngstowner and his bride of two months are killed when their stalled car is struck from behind on the Ohio Turnpike two miles west of the Warren interchange. James E. Mura, 21, and his wife, Lucia, 18, were returning to their home in Stow after visiting Mura's parents in Youngstown.
December 12, 1952: Lloyd Brownlee, 52-year-old Coitsville Township farmer, is acquitted of murder in the second degree for the shooting of Wycie Thompkins, who was shot at Brownlee's farm in August during an argument over Thompkins running coon dogs at the Brownlee farm without permission.
A Mahoning County Common Pleas jury awards the St. Stephen's Club $27,000 for 18 acres of land sought by the Youngstown Metropolitan Housing Authority for a $3 million low rent housing project on the East Side.
Mahoning County will begin paying its jurors on both the grand and petit panels $5 a day in the new year. The payment has been $3 for many years, with the exception of the Depression, when it was reduced to $2.
December 12, 1927: William K. Herwig, 36, Warren Township justice of the peace, calls the Trumbull County sheriff, calmly announces that he is going to kill himself and hangs up and does so. A shortage in his accounts is expected to run as high as $15,000.
Mary Tsemilles, 8, of Salinesville, drowns when she falls through the ice on a creek near Alliance. Her father, Theologes Tsemilles, attempted to rescue her and was pulled from the stream unconscious. Her body was found a half-hour later.
Yale University Professor of Economics Irving Fisher says that if the economic gains the United States has seen since 1921 continue for a few more years, poverty will be eliminated from the United States by 1932.