Years Ago

Today is Saturday, Dec. 12, the 346th day of 2009. There are 19 days left in the year. On this date in 1917, Father Edward Flanagan founds Boys Town outside Omaha, Neb.

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 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt nominates Oscar Straus to be Secretary of Commerce and Labor; Straus becomes the first Jewish Cabinet member. In 1925, the first motel — the Motel Inn — opens in San Luis Obispo, Calif. 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 1939, swashbuckling actor Douglas Fairbanks dies in Santa Monica, Calif., at age 56. In 1963, Kenya gains its independence from Britain. In 1985, 248 American soldiers and eight crew members are killed when an Arrow Air charter crashes after takeoff from Gander, Newfoundland. In 1989, in New York, hotel queen Leona Helmsley, 69, is sentenced to four years in prison and fined $7.1 million for tax evasion. (Helmsley serves 18 months behind bars, plus a month at a halfway house and two months of house arrest.)

December 12, 1984: Sparkle Markets plans to construct a supermarket that would fill almost an entire block northwest of the central business district in Salem.

Walter H. Paulo of Canfield, a former state senator who also had headed the Isaly Co.’s operations in Youngstown, dies at 82.

Ohio Gov. Richard F. Celeste names Lottery Director Thomas V. Chema chairman of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.

December 12, 1969: A teenage bandit escapes with about $100 after shooting John T. McGuane, 23, in the leg during a robbery at the Lee Paul Truck Stop in U.S. 224 near Route 534.

A raging fire feeding on sawdust sweeps through the planing mill of the Peoples Lumber Co. on W. Pershing Street in Salem, destroying the building and its production machinery.

About 30 residents jam Campbell City Council chambers and criticize Mayor Rocco Mico and Building Inspector Michael Pacak for allowing the construction of three houses on Notre Dame Drive that they say are substandard “shacks” that were put up in a week.

December 12, 1959: Half a block of downtown businesses were threatened for more than two hours by a fire that gutted the Hume’s Furniture Co. at 253-354 W. Federal Street. The loss of the building and its contents is $350,000.

A lone bandit escapes with $500 in $20 bills in a robbery at the Second National Bank in downtown Warren.

Almost 2,000 Youngstown and Mahoning County school safety patrolmen and other children jam the Palace Theater for the annual Christmas party sponsored by the police Juvenile Bureau and area businessmen.

December 12, 1934: As many as 5,000 Youngstown families who face no prospect of earning a living in the city would be transplanted to rural farms in Ohio under a plan being considered by Harry L. Hopkins, federal relief administrator. The cost would be about $1,500 per family.

Republic Steel Corp. prepares to light another open hearth, which would bring 34 of the district’s 83 furnaces on the active list.

Youngstown firemen are fixing broken sleds, wagons and wheelbarrows and other toys for distribution to needy children by the Sigma Club.