YEARS AGO

Today is Sunday, Nov. 29, the 333rd day of 2009. There are 32 days left in the year. On this date in 1961, Enos the chimp is launched from Cape Canaveral aboard the Mercury-Atlas 5 spacecraft, which orbited earth twice before returning.

In 1864, a Colorado militia kills at least 150 peaceful Cheyenne Indians in the Sand Creek Massacre. In 1924, Italian composer Giacomo Puccini dies in Brussels before he could complete his opera “Turandot.” (It was finished by Franco Alfano.) In 1929, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Richard E. Byrd, pilot Bernt Balchen, radio operator Harold June and photographer Ashley McKinney make the first airplane flight over the South Pole. In 1947, the U.N. General Assembly passes a resolution calling for the partitioning of Palestine between Arabs and Jews. In 1981, actress Natalie Wood drowns in a boating accident off Santa Catalina Island, Calif., at 43. In 1986, actor Cary Grant dies in Davenport, Iowa, at age 82. In 1989, in response to a growing pro-democracy movement in Czechoslovakia, the Communist-run Parliament ends the party’s 40-year monopoly on power. In 2001, George Harrison, the “quiet Beatle,” dies in Los Angeles following a battle with cancer; he was 58.

November 29, 1984: Congressman-elect James A. Traficant Jr. meets with House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill to discuss Traficant’s committee assignment preferences. Afterward, Traficant goes to dinner at The Palm Restaurant with two O’Neill staffers and Forest Beckett, Youngstown businessman.

Judge Leo P. Morley, who will take over as Probate Court judge in February resigns as a Youngstown Municipal Court Judge and will begin collecting his pension before taking the new job.

Richard Blackwell says attempts to restore the Paramount Theater in downtown Youngstown have fallen short on funds and an auction of furnishings will be held, including the theater’s Hillgreen Lane Co. pipe organ.

November 29, 1969: Two gunmen wearing ski masks hold up the Lordstown Branch of Second National Bank and escape with more than $19,000.

General Motors Corp.’s Fisher Body-Chevrolet plant at Lordstown is idle, with 5,500 employees getting a long weekend in a move designed to bring rising inventories in line with sales.

The Trumbull County commissioners avert a threatened walkout of county employees by promising that work done in December would be reimbursed in the first pay period in January.

The State Controlling Board approves a $30,000 grant to the Ohio Board of Regents for a feasibility study concerning construction of a medical school in Northeastern Ohio.

November 29, 1959: Ohio Industrial Parks Inc. plans to build a large new industrial park on 250 acres of Jackson Township, just west of North Jackson.

An automobile accident near New Bedford, Pa., kills a Girard man, Rodney Muffley, 24, and injures his bride four hours after the couple was married at the Chapel of the Friendly Bells in Trinity Methodist Church.

New York radio and TV men say Rock ’n’ Roll is headed the way of the Charleston, the Big Apple and the Black Bottom, a casualty of the “payola” scandal.

November 29, 1934: From 2,000 to 3,000 men and boys are expected to surround a five-mile square in Champion Township and then drive foxes that have been killing game into a pen in the center of the township. They hope to corral 20 foxes.

Miss Mary McCormick is chosen belle of the nurses’ dance at Stambaugh Auditorium.

Youngstown Councilman Anthony Kryzan asks the state Public Utilities Commission to investigate Ohio Edison Co.’s capital and rate structures.

With 78 precincts recounted, the lead of W.A. Ambrose over J.H. Leighninger in the race for Mahoning County prosecutor has been cut to seven votes.