Years Ago

Today is Thursday, Dec. 12, the 346th day of 2013. There are 19 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1787: Pennsylvania becomes the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

1870: Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina becomes the first black lawmaker sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives.

1897: “The Katzenjammer Kids,” the pioneering comic strip created by Rudolph Dirks, debuts in the New York Journal.

1906: President Theodore Roosevelt nominates Oscar Straus as secretary of commerce and labor; Straus becomes the first Jewish Cabinet member.

1911: Britain’s King George V announces during a visit to India that the capital would be transferred from Calcutta to Delhi.

1917: Father Edward Flanagan establishes Boys Town outside Omaha, Neb.

VINDICATOR FILES

1988: Trumbull County commissioners propose creating a Super Urban Enterprise Zone that would make 24 political subdivisions more attractive for business and industrial development.

Owners of Mahoning County hotels and motels voice opposition to a plan to build a convocation center in Youngstown that would be financed in part by a lodging tax of as much as 4 percent.

Public schools in Ohio are more likely than in any other state to suspend black students and rate sixth in corporal punishment of black children, an analysis of federal date shows.

1973: Chester Amedia, Youngstown Metropolitan Housing Authority director, says a housing complex for the elderly in Sebring will be a top YMHA priority in 1974.

Dr. Don P. Montgomery, pastor emeritus of Pleasant Grove U.P. Church in Youngstown, is honored on his retirement after 30 years on the Board of Directors of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.

Wean United Inc. books an order worth more than $15 million for three steel strip finishing lines from Altos Hornos de Mediterraneio S.A., a major new Spanish steel complex.

1963: A stakeout of a Cleveland Street house by state and federal agents and the Youngstown police intelligence squad uncovers a 50-gallon illegal liquor still and 28 gallons of moonshine.

Ursuline nuns who serve the Youngstown area move into a new million-dollar motherhouse and educational center on Shields Road.

1938: A letter from Bishop Joseph Schrembs of the Cleveland Catholic Diocese is read in Youngstown Catholic churches calling for parishioners to boycott theaters that show indecent films and merchants who sell indecent books or magazines.

Billy Durbin, 9-year-old son of Mr. and Mrs. Norbert Durbin, Regent Street, is recovering at home from minor injuries suffered in the wreck of a Baltimore & Ohio train near Defiance. The boy, who was returning from a visit to his grandparents, said he was asleep “when the train suddenly turned upside down.”