Years Ago

Today is Wednesday, Dec. 9, the 343rd day of 2009. There are 22 days left in the year. On this date in 1854, Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s famous poem, “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” is published in England.

In 1608, English poet John Milton is born in London. In 1892, “Widowers’ Houses,” Bernard Shaw’s first play, opens at the Royalty Theater in London. In 1909, actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is born in New York. In 1940, British troops open their first major offensive in North Africa during World War II. In 1941, China declares war on Japan, Germany and Italy. In 1958, the anti-Communist John Birch Society is formed in Indianapolis. In 1965, Nikolai V. Podgorny replaces Anastas I. Mikoyan as president of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. In 1984, the five-day-old hijacking of a Kuwaiti jetliner that claimed the lives of two Americans ends as Iranian security men seize control of the plane, which was parked at Tehran airport. In 1987, the first Palestinian intefadeh, or uprising, begins as riots break out in Gaza and spread to the West Bank, triggering a strong Israeli response.

December 9, 1984: The Inter-fraternity Council at Youngstown State University imposes a ban on alcohol at the “rush” parties held to recruit new fraternity members.

The next decade will be fruitful for public employee unions as collective bargaining becomes standard procedure in Ohio, says Lew Campbell, retiring regional director of the Ohio Council 9 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Dr. William D. Loeser, a Youngs-town internist, designs computer software to be used in prescribing antibiotic drugs using a Hewitt-Packard touchscreen computer.

December 9, 1969: Four people are killed, including an off-duty Pennsylvania state policeman, in a car-truck crash in Route 224, a mile west of New Castle. Dead are Trooper John Eby, 30; George Nicholls, 54, of Edinburg; Jacob Starr Jr., 19, of Campbell, and Loyal Eckerty, 59, of Edinburg.

Six members of the Cardinal Mooney High School Ski Club are all sporting casts or bandages on their left legs after a run-in with the slopes at Peek N Peak Ski Lodge.

The names of more than 240 city employees who have no civil service protection are turned over to the Youngstown Charter Revision Committee by the Civil Service Commission to emphasize the need for new personnel polices.

December 9, 1959: East Liver-pool Mayor Fred P. Lawrence, who says he was offered $1,000 a week in 1957 to permit a numbers operation to operate in his city, is continuing his battle for city council’s approval of an antigambling ordinance that may affect church, fraternal and other charitable raffles.

Liberty Township school children get an unexpected holiday when the school is forced to close for lack of water. A pumping station that supplies water to the school and some 250 homes is shut down.

The Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad will seek a federal court injunction to halt a strike of trainmen which began in Youngstown and paralyzed the entire system.

December 9, 1934: Ray Hag-strom, chairman of the Mahoning County Christmas Seals campaign, says the goal is to sell two million seals in the county, which would raise $2,000 to care for the county’s tuberculosis cases.

W.A. Ambrose is planning to file suit challenging the Board of Elections’ ruling that Prosecutor J.H. Leighninger won re-election.

Jack McPhee’s Youngstown College cagers upset the famed Washington & Jefferson crew, 32-23, at the downtown YMCA.