Today is Monday, Dec. 9, the 343rd day of 2013. There are 22 days left in the year.

Today is Monday, Dec. 9, the 343rd day of 2013. There are 22 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1608: English poet John Milton is born in London.

1854: Alfred Lord Tennyson’s famous poem, “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” is published in England.

1911: An explosion inside the Cross Mountain coal mine near Briceville, Tenn., kills 84 workers. (Five are rescued.)

1912: Longtime House Speaker Thomas “Tip” O’Neill is born in Cambridge, Mass.

1940: British troops open their first major offensive in North Africa during World War II.

1942: The Aram Khachaturian ballet “Gayane,” featuring the surging “Sabre Dance,” is first performed by Russia’s Kirov Ballet.

1958: The anti-communist John Birch Society is formed in Indianapolis.

1962: The Petrified Forest in Arizona is designated a national park.

1971: Nobel Peace laureate Ralph Bunche dies in New York.

1982: Special Watergate prosecutor Leon Jaworski dies at his Wimberley, Texas, ranch at age 77.

VINDICATOR FILES

1988: Representatives of Youngstown and Darlington, Pa., have offered competing incentive packages to attract a Ryan Homes Inc. manufacturing plant and 90 jobs, but a Ryan spokesman says the company is almost certain to build in Darlington.

Gov. Richard F. Celeste is poised to sign a bill partially deregulating Ohio’s telephone industry, despite objections by William Spratley, director of Ohio’s Consumers’ Counsel, the state’s consumer advocacy agency.

Keith VanTassell, 15, a freshman at Reynolds High School, is treated at Greenville Regional Hospital for a flesh wound sustained while hunting in Pymatuning Township, Pa., with his 18-year-old brother and a companion.

1973: Judge Sidney Rigelhaupt, who has been on the Mahoning County bench since 1962, will retire in 1974, and Democrats are already scrambling to find a candidate who could win the seat.

Handicapped at home by increasing regulation, labor problems, fuel shortages and the high cost of environmental controls, more American industrial companies, including some in the Youngstown area, are looking to expand operations abroad, writes Vindicator Business Editor George R. Reiss.

G.W. Bassett of Youngs-town, a leader in the truckers’ blockade of interstate highways to protest higher fuel costs and lower speed limits, say truckers will shift from blocking highways to closing truck stops.

1963: Mahoning County Prosecutor Clyde W. Osborne says a second list of as many as 30 witnesses will be called before a grand jury investigating organized crime in the Mahoning Valley.

Fred Jones scores 20 and Ron Allen, 16, as Coach Dom Roselli’s Youngstown University Penguins beat Ashland College, 83-49, before 1,500 fans at South Field House.

Frank E. Savage, manager of the Warner Theater and a member of the staff since the Warner Brothers took over in 1926, dies in St. Elizabeth Hospital at the age of 64.

1938: Two gunmen who held up the Sebring Midland-Buckeye Federal Savings and Loan and escaped with $2,700 are arrested at Washington Courthouse after they and two women manacled a highway patrolman with his own handcuffs, kidnapped him and threw him into a field.

City Law Director Vern B. Thomas refuses a property owner’s demand that he seek an injunction barring the park and recreation commission from building a swimming pool at Belmont Avenue and Tod Lane.

A quick burning garage fire that destroyed seven automobiles belonging to tenants of the Parkway Towers apartment nearly trapped the gasoline thieves whom firemen blamed for starting the fire.