Today is Saturday, Dec. 24, the 358th day of 2005. There are seven days left in the year. This is

Today is Saturday, Dec. 24, the 358th day of 2005. There are seven days left in the year. This is Christmas Eve. On this date in 1905, future billionaire, aviator and moviemaker Howard Hughes is born in Texas.
In 1865, several veterans of the Confederate Army form a private social club in Pulaski, Tenn., called the Ku Klux Klan. In 1871, Giuseppe Verdi's opera "Aida" has its world premiere in Cairo, Egypt, to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal. In 1943, President Roosevelt appoints Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower supreme commander of Allied forces. In 1951, Gian Carlo Menotti's "Amahl and the Night Visitors," the first opera written specifically for television, is first broadcast by NBC TV. In 1968, the Apollo 8 astronauts, orbiting the moon, read passages from the Old Testament Book of Genesis during a Christmas Eve television broadcast. In 1980, Americans remember the U.S. hostages in Iran by burning candles or shining lights for 417 seconds -- a second for each day of captivity.
December 24, 1980: Four new police officer jobs will be filled on the Youngstown Police Department, all by black applicants to settle a four-year-old discrimination suit.
The skeletal remains of a second murder victim have been found on an abandoned Columbiana County farm south of Salineville. The bodies were buried in limestone and dirt beneath a burned out outhouse on property known as the "old Maple farm."
December 24, 1965: James Rafoth, 23, manager of the Woodworth Isaly Dairy Store on Market St. Ext., is robbed and slugged by armed bandits in the second holdup in a week at an Isaly store.
Burglars take fur stoles, coats and suede jackets worth $5,000 from Abraham's Ladies Apparel Store, 217 W. Federal St.
December 24, 1955: Railroad orders totaling $30 million will give Youngstown Steel Door Co. capacity operations through 1957, says John P. McWilliams, chairman and president of the firm.
The Christmas hopes of 200 families vanish in smoke as a fire sweeps through the upstairs of the Volunteers of America warehouse, destroying refurbished toys, clothes and furniture that were to be distributed to the needy.
December 24, 1930: Miss Ann Woodward, head of the Allied Council, says not a family in the city will be without a Christmas dinner thanks to the generosity of fellow Youngstowners. The council has distributed food baskets to 2,650 needy families.
Dr. Silas Schiller, 84, one of the oldest physicians in Youngstown, with a practice covering 60 years, dies suddenly of heart trouble at his home, 624 Market St.
Sheriff Adam Stone and Police Chief Paul Lyden arrest 18 bootleggers and warn that there will be no let up in enforcement by police on Christmas.