Today is Sunday, Dec. 24, the 358th day of 2006. There are seven days left in the year. This is Christmas Eve. On this date in 1906, Canadian physicist Reginald A. Fessenden becomes the first person

Today is Sunday, Dec. 24, the 358th day of 2006. There are seven days left in the year. This is Christmas Eve. On this date in 1906, Canadian physicist Reginald A. Fessenden becomes the first person to transmit the human voice (his own) as well as music over radio, from Brant Rock, Mass.
In 1865, several veterans of the Confederate Army form a private social club in Pulaski, Tenn., called the Ku Klux Klan. In 1943, President Roosevelt appoints Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower supreme commander of Allied forces as part of Operation Overlord. 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 Eight 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 -- one second for each day of captivity.
December 24, 1981: The Mahoning County grand jury issues negative reports on the conditions of both the city and county jails. "The stench on the fourth floor and the booking area [of the City Jail} is sickening," jury foreman Joseph Loree wrote.
A two-alarm fire destroys a South Side grocery store, leaving two families who live upstairs homeless on Christmas Eve. Four Youngstown firefighters escape serious injury because a food counter broke the fall of a wall collapsing toward them.
General Motors Corp.'s Lordstown auto assembly line, already idle for over five weeks because of poor car sales, will be shut down for another week in January, idling 6,200 workers.
December 24, 1966: Debbie Cormier, 13, of Greentree, Pa., who is struggling to recover from a crippling accident, gets a surprise Christmas gift, a horse, from a man she never met, Youngstown developer and horse track owner Edward J. DeBartolo, who was touched by a newspaper story about the girl.
Warren police and firemen end a sick-out and return to work, clearing the way for renewed negotiations with the city for better pay and fringe benefits.
Youngstown Postmaster Chester W. Bailey says the institution of ZIP codes helped his office clear the Christmas rush mail, including 852,000 pieces received on Friday leading into the Christmas weekend.
December 24, 1956: The Youngstown Post Office is "clean as a hound's tooth," says Postmaster John E. Doyle. Christmas mail was so well cleared out that only a skeleton force was needed on Christmas Eve.
Weekend traffic deaths leading into the Christmas holiday are headed for a record at 424 nationwide. Another 27 persons died in fires and 51 in miscellaneous accidents.
December 24, 1931: Christmas season mailings were down by about 24 percent in 1931 from a year earlier, says Youngstown Postmaster B.E. Westwood. All deliveries are up to date and temporary clerks hired for the season have been laid off.
Youngstown police jail 11 burglary and robbery suspects, including one captured after a wild chase during which he was wounded and one whose auto struck a traffic patrolman.
Despite a gloomy rain, downtown Youngstown cash registers are jingling as folks who stalled on their Christmas shopping do some last minute buying.
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