Years Ago

Today is Saturday, Dec. 11, the 345th day of 2010. There are 20 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1792: France’s King Louis XVI goes before the Convention to face charges of treason. (Louis is convicted, and executed the following month.)

1816: Indiana becomes the 19th state.

1910: French inventor Georges Claude publicly displays his first neon lamp, consisting of two 38-foot-long tubes, at the Paris Expo.

1928: Police in Buenos Aires announce they have thwarted an attempt on the life of President-elect Herbert Hoover.

1936: Britain’s King Edward VIII abdicates in order to marry American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson.

1941: Germany and Italy declare war on the United States; the U.S. responds in kind.

1980: President Jimmy Carter signs into a law legislation creating a $1.6 billion environmental “superfund” to pay for cleaning up chemical spills and toxic waste dumps.

“Magnum P.I.,” starring Tom Selleck, premieres on CBS.

1997: More than 150 countries agree at a global warming conference in Kyoto, Japan, to control the Earth’s greenhouse gases.

VINDICATOR FILES

1985: Dr. William Binning, a member of the Mahoning County Board of Elections, demands an apology from U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. for casting doubt on the legitimacy of the count in the Boardman Township board of trustees race after a recount shows no irregularities.

Two boys, Clifford and Charles Dabney, 7 and 6 years old, die in a fire at an apartment house at 2151 Market St. A brother and sister are severely burned.

The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio approves a 3 percent increase in monthly phone fees for Bell Telephone Co., rejecting the company’s request for a 30 percent hike.

1970: A powerful bomb damages the home of McCullough Williams Jr., funeral director, board of education member and civil rights leader, at 464 Crandall Ave. It damages two nearby homes of other prominent Negroes, Law Director William Higgins and Patrolman Robert Harris.

A methadone maintenance center for the treatment of heroin addiction will be established at 507 Oak Hill Ave. by the Bureau of Drug Abuse, Ohio Department of Mental Hygiene and Correction.

Mayor Jack C. Hunter vetoes a zone change that would have cleared the way for construction of a Sunoco service station at Midlothian Boulevard and Loveland Road.

Joseph G. Butler III, director of the Butler Institute of American Art, is selected to receive the first annual Ohio Arts Council award for contributions to the arts in Ohio.

1960: Common Pleas Judge Erskine Maiden Jr. takes under advisement Atty. Eugene Fox’s new fight for more than $9,500 in attorney’s fees for a taxpayer lawsuit he won over city industrial water rates.

Two Columbiana County Radio stations, WOHI and WOHI-FM in East Liverpool, are sold to a group of New York investors.

Youngstown Postmaster C.W. Bailey warns that unless people get their Christmas cards and packages in the mail soon, chances of delivery by Christmas are dwindling.

1935: The American Iron and Steel Institute surveys executives in the steel industry and finds that nine out of 10 were not born with silver spoons in their mouths, but that they rose from the ranks of their companies.

More than 1,000 holders of 150,000 shares of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. preferred stock receive a welcome Christmas gift as the company announces a quarterly dividend aggregating $206,250.

I.L. Feuer, city relief director, says special investigations will result in culling 300 cheaters from Youngstown’s relief rolls.