Years Ago

Today is Monday, Dec. 17, the 352nd day of 2012. There are 14 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1903: Wilbur and Orville Wright of Dayton, Ohio, conduct the first successful manned powered-airplane flights near Kitty Hawk, N.C..

1939: The German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee is scuttled by its crew, ending the World War II Battle of the River Plate off Uruguay.

1957: The United States successfully test-fires the Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time.

1961: An arson fire at a circus in Niteroi, Brazil, kills 323 people.

1975: Lynette Fromme is sentenced in Sacramento, Calif., to life in prison for her attempt on the life of President Gerald R. Ford. (She is paroled in August 2009.)

1992: President George H.W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari sign the North American Free Trade Agreement in separate ceremonies

VINDICATOR FILES

1987: Testifying in his own defense, William T. Dawson Jr., who is accused of killing Youngstown Patrolman Paul Durkin, says he was in fear for his life because Durkin had a reputation for brutalizing North Siders and taking their illegal drugs.

Dr. Hai Shiuh Wang, a Youngstown ophthalmologist, is elected president of the Mahoning County Medical Society.

1972: Youngstown detectives recover several handguns, shotguns, rare coins and other merchandise from the car of a burglar who was shot dead by a special antiburglary squad.

The Western Reserve Transit Authority files an application for a $900,000 federal grant for purchase of 20 new buses and terminal facilities.

Samuel Taradash is voted Outstanding Civil Engineer of the Youngstown Branch of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

1962: Youngstown loses an estimated 2,401 people since the 1960 census with a population of 164,288 in the city. Mahoning County’s total population is up 8,225 to 308,705.

Youngstown City Council president Anthony B. Flask formally announces his candidacy for mayor.

Edward J. Allen, former Youngstown police chief and now police chief of Santa Ana, Calif., writes expressing a hope that the death of an innocent child will shake Youngstown from the “fog of indifference to, if not outright connivance with, the Mafia-oriented underworld.”

1937: J. Calvin Ewing, former Mahoning County Probate Court judge, dies at his home at 269 Norwood Ave. He was 74.

The Buckeye Beer and Liquor Dealers Association asks the Ohio Liquor Control Board to clamp down on wholesale violations of liquor laws in the Youngstown district.