Years Ago

Today is Wednesday, Dec. 14, the 348th day of 2011. There are 17 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1799: The first president of the United States, George Washington, dies at his Mount Vernon, Va., home at age 67.

1861: Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, dies at Windsor Castle at age 42.

1911: Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his team become the first men to reach the South Pole, beating out a British expedition led by Robert F. Scott.

1961: A school bus is hit by a passenger train at a crossing near Greeley, Colo., killing 20 students.

1981: Israel annexes the Golan Heights, which it had seized from Syria in 1967.

VINDICATOR FILES

1986: Gov. Richard F. Celestes says that during his second term he will continue state involvement in the Mahoning Valley’s economic development, especially regarding Lake Milton and the Strouss-Kaufmann’s building downtown.

Three associate ministers of New Baptist Church are ordained: Frankie Madison, Brenda Jones and Mark Rheins.

1971: Common Pleas Judge Clyde W. Osborne limits the number of pickets at Youngstown Hospital Association’s North Side and South Side hospitals, which are being struck by SEIU Local 627.

A Lane Avenue motorist tells police he had no choice when his car lost its brakes on Wick Avenue than to steer onto Central Square, where the car came to rest against the downtown Christmas tree. Some lights were broken, but the tree stood.

Youngstown public schools will receive $20 per child extra from the state because at least 50 percent of the pupils in the city schools are classified “educationally disadvantaged”

1961: FBI agents are examining a possible link between a string of burglaries in the Youngstown-New Castle area and the theft of 10 paintings valued at $750,000 from a Pittsburgh industrialist, G. David Thompson. Included were six Picassos, two Legers and a Matisse.

Mahoning County Welfare Director I.L. Feuer says relief payments for the county’s poor will remain at 80 percent but Aid to Dependent Children may be cut to as low as 59 percent because of budget restraints.

Louis S. Kreider, 75, founder of one of Youngstown’s largest real estate firms, dies of a heart ailment at his Oak Knoll Drive home.

1936: Nine of Youngs-town Municipal Co.’s recently mothballed gasoline-powered buses are brought back into service to accommodate Youngstown Christmas shoppers after two trackless trolleys become disabled.

Figures made public by the Census Bureau show that retail sales in Youngstown during 1935 increased more over those of 1933 than any other Ohio city except Springfield.