Years Ago

Today is Saturday, Dec. 21, the 355th day of 2013. There are 10 days left in the year. Winter arrives at 12:11 p.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.

1861: President Abraham Lincoln signs a congressional act authorizing the Navy Medal of Honor.

1879: The Henrik Ibsen play “A Doll’s House” premieres at the Royal Theater in Copenhagen.

1910: Some 344 coal miners are killed in Britain’s Pretoria Pit Disaster.

1913: What’s regarded as the first newspaper crossword puzzle is published in the New York World. Created by journalist Arthur Wynne, it is billed as a “Word-Cross Puzzle.”

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

1942: The U.S. Supreme Court, in Williams v. North Carolina, rules 6-2 that all states have to recognize divorces granted in Nevada.

VINDICATOR FILES

1988: A Mahoning County Common Pleas jury rejects damage claims by patrons of a New Middletown bar against two Mahoning County deputies accused by patrons at Mr. C’s tavern in New Middletown of terrorizing them.

Youngstown’s Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini and Hector “Macho” Camacho announce that they will meet in a nontitle 12-round “grudge match” in Reno, Nev., in March.

The Youngstown Police Department’s Special Investigations Unit says it capped a three-month probe of cocaine trafficking in the North Side with the arrest of a bus driver for a local preschool center.

1973: Frank A Nemec, chairman of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., asks the federal Cost of Living Council to remove the steel industry from cost controls at once.

Youngstown State University takes first place honors at a debate tournament hosted by Geneva College. Team members were Bill Zorn, Jo Roberts, Randy Baringer and Kelly Shreck.

A young man and woman, Otis L. James, 21, and Charlene Daniels, 20, are found shot to death in a Roman Street SE house in Warren. A baby was found unharmed in the couple’s home.

1963: Youngstown Patrolman Frank Cichon, 41, is killed and three other people, including another patrolman, are injured when struck by a car at the scene of an earlier accident at Glenwood Avenue and Cleveland Street.

In his last official directive to the Youngstown Police Department, outgoing Chief William R. Golden praises the men of the department for earning the city the lowest crime rate in Ohio for cities in the 100,000 population class.

The Most Rev. Emmet M. Walsh, bishop of Youngstown, will offer a pontifical mass at midnight Christmas Eve in St. Columbus Cathedral, which will be broadcast over WFMJ-TV.

1938: Chauncey Miller, a 22-year-old Struthers hitchhiker, confesses to the slaying of Henry W. Fitch, member of a pioneer Struthers family, in Fitch’s car almost in front of the Struthers police station in October.

Criticizing people “who don’t like the sound of children’s voices,” Mahoning Common Pleas Judge David G. Jenkins dismisses a suit that attempted to block construction of a city swimming pool at Tod Lane and Belmont Avenue.

Al Davies, superintendent of Mill Creek Park, says a new entrance is being considered to the park at McCollum Road and Wilkerson Avenue and application for funding has been made to the WPA.