Years Ago

Today is Monday, Dec. 13, the 347th day of 2010. There are 18 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1862: Union forces suffer a major defeat to the Confederates in the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg.

1918: President Woodrow Wilson arrives in France, becoming the first chief executive to visit Europe while in office.

1944: During World War II, the U.S. cruiser Nashville is badly damaged in a Japanese kamikaze attack that claims more than 130 lives.

1978: The Philadelphia Mint begins stamping the Susan B. Anthony dollar, which goes into circulation in July 1979.

1994: An American Eagle commuter plane crashes short of Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina, killing 15 of the 20 people on board.

VINDICATOR FILES

1985: U.S. District Judge Thomas D. Lambros sentences five Youngstown area men to sentences ranging from 90 days to six years in federal prison for their roles in the explosion of a Beaver Township fireworks plant in which nine people were killed.

1970: Two South High School seniors, Gerald Minor and Joel Melton, represent the youth of Youngstown at the White House Conference on Children and Youth in Washington, D.C.

Postmaster Chester Bailey reports that Youngstown mail is 15.6 percent below what it was at this time a year earlier.

1960: Allen Ewing, a 34-year-old farmhand, jumps into the freezing waters of Saw Mill Creek, in an unsuccessful attempt to save Daniel Lee Layman, 5, of Turner Road. He fell in the creek while playing with two other preschoolers.

Yeggs remove a safe containing $1,400 from the Avalon Gardens on Belmont Avenue as the city continues to suffer through a plague of house and business burglaries.

1935: Elliot Ness, 32-year-old former federal agent credited with helping put Al Capone in prison, is named safety director of the city of Cleveland.

A 65 mph automobile race for $5 stakes ends with the death of Louis Okinas, 23, when his car overturns near New Bedford. Okinas and Dominic Marciano were racing from a Shehy Street tavern to New Bedford by different routes.