Years Ago

Today is Wednesday, Dec. 23, the 357th day of 2009. There are eight days left in the year. On this date in 1968, 82 crew members of the U.S. intelligence ship Pueblo are released by North Korea, 11 months after they had been captured.

In 1783, George Washington resigns as commander in chief of the Continental Army and retires to his home at Mount Vernon, Va. In 1788, Maryland passes an act to cede an area “not exceeding ten miles square” for the seat of the national government; about two-thirds of the area become the District of Columbia. In 1823, the poem “Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas” is published anonymously in the Troy (N.Y.) Sentinel; the verse, more popularly known as “’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” is later attributed to Clement C. Moore. In 1893, the Engelbert Humperdinck opera “Haensel und Gretel” is first performed, in Weimar, Germany. In 1941, during World War II, American forces on Wake Island surrender to the Japanese. In 1948, former Japanese premier Hideki Tojo and six other Japanese war leaders are executed in Tokyo. In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson holds an unprecedented meeting with Pope Paul VI at the Vatican. In 1975, Richard S. Welch, the Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Athens, Greece, is shot and killed outside his home by the militant group November 17.

December 23, 1984: Henry Guzman, who works in Columbus as an assistant director of Ohio’s State and Local Government Commission, remains on the Youngstown Board of Education, commuting three hours each way to monthly board meetings for the past eight months.

The city of Youngstown hires a company to appraise everything, from its pencils to its raised water tanks as part of the new state-mandated accounting system.

Virginia Wilkerson of Girard has built a Christmas village out of matchsticks that includes the Neil Street home in which she and her mother live, four other houses, two churches, a covered bridge and a gazebo.

December 23, 1969: The Youngstown Board of Education will meet in special session at which members are expected to approve fully paid family hospitalization for 1,800 district employees.

Patrolman Henry Hlasta, Firefighter Rocco Russo and Wes Johnstone, president of the Youngstown Area Chamber of Commerce, tell the Youngstown Charter Revision Committee that the residency requirement for Youngstown safety forces should be eliminated to facilitate recruitment of qualified officers.

Howard Graham is named general manager of Ogden Recreation Inc., a subsidiary of Ogden Corp., which oversees Waterford Park, Wheeling Downs, Fairmount Park and Scarborough Downs.

December 23, 1959: A two-car crash in old Route 82 near Warner Road sends 14 people to Sharon General Hospital with injuries, three of which were serious. Six doctors, six orderlies and 12 nurses were called to the emergency room to handle the patients.

Mayor Frank X. Kryzan urges city council to renew immediately a nine-mill income tax instead of enacting a one-percent levy he had proposed a month earlier.

The Boardman Board of Education approves contracts totaling $1.4 million for construction of a new junior high school building off Glenwood Ave.

December 23, 1934: Dorothy Zimmerman of South High, Helen Toth of Chaney and Jean Hossel of Boardman are the winners of the Girl Reserve doll dressing contest. All dolls dressed for the contest will be distributed to needy children.

Harry Vaughn, 30, of Newton Falls is captured after holding up two girls using a toy pistol in Ravenna and then fleeing in a car that collided with another vehicle at E. Main St. and Clinton. Mary Jane Boch, 17, of Garrettsville, a passenger in the other car, was killed.

Mahoning Valley Boy Scouts will deliver Christmas baskets to the needy and shut-ins under the direction of their Scoutmasters.