Years Ago

Today is Friday, Dec. 21, the 356th day of 2012. There are 10 days left in the year. Winter arrives at 6:12 a.m. Eastern time.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1620: Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower go ashore for the first time at present-day Plymouth, Mass.

1937: Walt Disney’s first feature-length animated cartoon, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” has its world premiere in Los Angeles.

1945: Gen. George S. Patton dies in Heidelberg, Germany, of injuries from a car accident.

1958: Charles de Gaulle is elected to a seven-year term as the first president of the Fifth Republic of France.

1976: The Liberian-registered tanker Argo Merchant breaks apart near Nantucket Island, off Massachusetts, almost a week after running aground, spilling 7.5 million gallons of oil into the North Atlantic.

1988: Two hundred and seventy people are killed when a terrorist bomb explodes aboard a Pam Am Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

VINDICATOR FILES

1987: Tilman “Iceman” Bevely swishes in a pair of foul shots with 14 seconds left to give Youngstown State University Penguins a 66-65 win over Tennessee State in the Ohio Valley Conference opener for both teams.

Mahoning County Common Pleas Judge William G. Houser says the jury hearing the William T. Dawson Jr. murder trial will be allowed to consider the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter.

1972: Hours will be extended for the last Sunday shopping day before Christmas, which is Christmas Eve, from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., at most downtown stores.

One construction worker is dead and seven are injured in an explosion after a bulldozer ruptures a 12-inch natural gas line at the Shirley Road overpass of the Boardman Expressway. Dead is Russell D. Allen, 53, the bulldozer operator and an employee of A.P. O’Horo Co.

Patrolman Nicholas D’Alesio, re-elected president of the Youngstown FOP Lodge 28, warns that the city may see bouts of Blue Flu in 1973 unless the city administration proposes a “fair salary increase.”

The Union Oil Co. plans a major auto-truck stop complex on a 17-acre site at the southeast corner of I-80 and Route 46 in Austintown.

1962: Myron E. Roberts, president of the Mahoning National Bank, is elected president of the Youngstown Area Chamber of Commerce.

Winter officially arrives in Youngstown, bringing with it 3 inches of snow.

Alfred B. Glossbrenner, a son of A.S. Glossbrenner, president of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., is named superintendent for operations of Timken Roller Bearing Co.’s Steel and Tube Division.

1937: Elections and political campaigns in Mahoning County during 1937 cost $102,030 or $1.66 for each of the 62,539 votes cast in the November election. Low voter turnout caused candidates to spend more in an attempt to get apathetic voters to the polls.

Sen. J. Ralph Seidner of Youngstown, head of the “Hatchet Men” of the Ohio Senate, will be chairman of a committee of seven to investigate reports of “legalized graft” in state government departments.

Lt. Commander Andrew Lawton, captain of the U.S. gunboat Guam that patrolled the Yangtze River recently, says during a furlough at his parents’ Youngstown home that China will fight long and hard against Japanese occupation of its territory.