Years Ago

Today is Friday, Dec. 24, the 358th day of 2010. There are 7 days left in the year. This is Christmas Eve.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1809: Legendary American frontiersman Christopher “Kit” Carson is born in Madison County, Ky.

1814: The War of 1812 officially ends as the United States and Britain sign the Treaty of Ghent in Belgium.

1851: Fire devastates the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., destroying about 35,000 volumes.

1865: Several veterans of the Confederate Army form a private social club in Pulaski, Tenn., called the Ku Klux Klan.

1871: Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Aida” has its world premiere in Cairo, Egypt.

1943: President Franklin D. Roosevelt appoints Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower supreme commander of Allied forces as part of Operation Overlord.

1951: Gian Carlo Menotti’s “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” the first opera written specifically for television, is first broadcast by NBC-TV.

1968: The Apollo 8 astronauts, orbiting the moon, read passages from the Old Testament Book of Genesis during a Christmas Eve telecast.

VINDICATOR FILES

1985: State Rep. Michael G. Verich disavows a letter on his stationery sent to YSU indicating his unwillingness to support YSU’s request for $11 million in state capital improvement money. Verich said the letter was written by an intern on his staff who misunderstood his position.

Linda L. Gentile is installed as president of the board of the Mahoning County Community Correction Association, succeeding Tim Mulholland.

1970: Dr. George M. McKelvey, 63, a leading Youngstown surgeon and a director of the GM McKelvey Co. that was founded by his grandfather, dies of a heart ailment in North Side Hospital.

Youngstown Mayor Jack C. Hunter meets with 13 Negroes who resigned from the Mayor’s Human Relations Commission to protest the dismissal of E. Thaxton King, Model Cities director.

Youngstown firemen save two children, Martha Fink, 3, and her brother Timmy, 4, from a fire that destroyed their Powers Way home.

1960: Fire sweeps through a large frame horse barn at the Trumbull County Fairgrounds, killing Nathan Barrett, a caretaker, and Willa Belle. Twenty top harness horses also died.

William L. Bonnell, 57, of Newman, Ga., former Youngstown aluminum company executive, dies at his home following a heart attack.

Fire blamed on a defective furnace levels a two-story home near Lisbon, leaving a large family facing a bleak Christmas. Mrs. Frank Greathouse and 10 children escaped. Mr. Greathouse is in a Pittsburgh veterans hospital.

1935: Hundreds of Youngstown city workers line up at City Hall to receive $50 in scrip to tide them over Christmas. The employees are still owed the bulk of their pay dating to October.

Steve Mindek drowns in the icy waters of the Mahoning River in Warren on his 10th birthday, after pushing his younger brother, Albert, to safety when the ice on the river began to give way beneath them.

Sheriff Ralph Elser calls for a meeting of the mayors of Youngstown, Campbell and Struthers to discuss plans for more rigid law enforcement efforts in their cities.