Today is Wednesday, Dec. 14, the 348th day of 2005. There are 17 days left in the year. On this date

Today is Wednesday, Dec. 14, the 348th day of 2005. There are 17 days left in the year. On this date in 1799, the first president of the United States, George Washington, dies at his Mount Vernon home at age 67.
In 1819, Alabama joins the Union as the 22nd state. In 1861, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, dies in London. In 1911, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen becomes the first man to reach the South Pole, beating out an expedition led by Robert F. Scott. In 1939, the Soviet Union is dropped from the League of Nations. In 1945, Josef Kramer, known as "the beast of Belsen," and 10 others are hanged in Hameln for crimes committed at the Belsen and Auschwitz Nazi concentration camps. In 1975, six South Moluccan extremists surrender after holding 23 hostages for 12 days on a train near the Dutch town of Beilen.
December 14, 1980: The Mahoning County welfare office is seeing an increase in a new kind of client, middle class men and women who are now unemployed and are filing for food stamps and welfare payments for the first time.
The Ford Motor Co., the world's third largest industrial corporation, will spend big money -- about $4 billion a year over three years -- to develop new products and dig itself out of the financial doldrums.
Girard city officials indicate they would look more kindly on the proposed development of 30 acres of vacant land on Church Hill Road than Liberty Township trustees, who turned down a rezoning request by Little Squaw Creek Development Corp. The city sees acquisition of the parcel through annexation as an introduction to the acquisition of the rich Belmont Ave. motel strip.
December 14, 1965: Gene Trace, 57, executive vice president and co-owner of radio station WBBW, dies of a heart attack at Good Samaritan Hospital, West Palm Beach, Fla.
A 44-year-old South Side businessman, Victor Lilley, is kidnaped at gunpoint and his car commandeered by two jewel robbers desperate to escape the city after a bungled hold up at Buttar's Jewelry Store in Uptown. Lilley was released by the robbers in Steubenville and drove back to Youngstown without knowing why he was abducted until he contacted police.
A Pennsylvania gambler who served six months in a New York prison for bribing a college basketball player is one of the incorporators of the firm that was awarded a community antenna television system franchise by a 5-2 vote by Youngstown City Council.
December 14, 1955: The Youngstown Community Corp. raises $895,146 in its 1955 Community Chest campaign, $5,850 over its goal and a record for the drive.
Industrial Youngstown, virtually swamped with a yuletide backing of business, is preparing to celebrate a merry Christmas by wrapping up one of the biggest and most profitable peacetime years in its history.
A stopgap ordinance renewing the 5-mill city income tax is made an emergency measure and advanced to second reading by City Council after a series of clashes between Mayor Frank X. Kryzan and 4th Ward Councilman Paul E. Dolak.
Ohio Gov. Frank J. Lausche announces his candidacy for "favorite son" in the 1956 Democratic presidential primaries.
December 14, 1930: Youngstown Sheet & amp; Tube Co. will distribute $1.2 million in dividends despite a poor fourth quarter in the steel business.
The Army-Navy game, the greatest game football has to offer, is played at Yankee Stadium in New York before 70,000 and raises $600,000 for charity. Army wins, 6-0.
Writer Sinclair Lewis, in Stockholm to accept the Nobel price for literature, throws a press photographer out of his hotel room. The photographer slipped into the room along with two girls wearing crowns of lighted candles on their heads who were sent to Sinclair's room to deliver coffee.