Years Ago

Today is Saturday, Dec. 4, the 338th day of 2010. There are 27 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1783: Gen. George Washington bids farewell to his Continental Army officers at Fraunces Tavern in New York, telling them, “With a heart full of love and gratitude I now take leave of you.”

1816: James Monroe of Virginia is elected the fifth president of the United States.

1875: William Marcy Tweed, the “Boss” of New York City’s Tammany Hall political organization, escapes from jail and flees the country.

1918: President Woodrow Wilson leaves Washington on a trip to France to attend the Versailles Peace Conference.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders the dismantling of the Works Progress Administration, which had been created to provide jobs during the Depression.

1965: The United States launches Gemini 7 with Air Force Lt. Col. Frank Borman and Navy Cmdr. James A. Lovell aboard.

1978: San Francisco gets its first female mayor as City Supervisor Dianne Feinstein is named to replace the assassinated George Moscone.

1980: The bodies of four American churchwomen slain in El Salvador two days earlier are unearthed. (Five Salvadoran national guardsmen are later convicted of murdering nuns Ita Ford, Maura Clarke and Dorothy Kazel, and lay worker Jean Donovan.)

1984: A five-day hijack drama begins as four armed men seize a Kuwaiti airliner en route to Pakistan and force it to land in Tehran, where the hijackers kill American passenger Charles Hegna.

1996: The Mars Pathfinder lifts off from Cape Canaveral and begins speeding toward Mars on a 310 million-mile odyssey. (It arrives on Mars in July 1997.)

VINDICATOR FILES

1985: One of two burglars who escaped Warren police by fleeing into the city’s storm sewer system is arrested a day later. The men evaded police during a two-hour chase through the 72-inch sewer, but in the morning, police found footprints in the snow leading from a manhole to a house on McMyler Street.

The Youngstown Board of Education severs its ties with the city Civil Service Commission in the hiring of board employees who are members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

1970: About 100 people attend as Mayor Jack C. Hunter flips the switch lighting a 50-foot Canadian spruce tree on Federal Plaza.

Dr. Walter Greissinger, city health commissioner, says a proposed health program for Model Cities is unacceptable because it provides too little for residents.

Youngstown City Council levies special assessments totaling $635,316 against 9,500 city lots for sidewalks that were built in 1963.

1960: Congressmen from the 19th, 11th and 16th districts, Michael J. Kirwan, Frank T. Bow and Robert E. Cook, will meet to discuss the water level that will be maintained at the $14 million Berlin Reservoir.

Keith M. Montizambert, vice president and cashier of Union National Bank, and a figure in the city’s social life for years, will retire from the bank.

1935: The Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce, citing potential losses to area railroads, is prepared to withdraw its support of Lake Erie-Ohio River canal.

Youngstown’s blind strolling guitar player, Charles Bakody, 63, dies of a heart attack in St. Elizabeth Hospital. He was a familiar figure strolling up and down Federal Street playing his guitar and sometimes selling newspapers.