YEARS AGO

Today is Sunday, Dec. 29, the 363rd day of 2013. There are two days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1170,: Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is slain in Canterbury Cathedral by knights loyal to King Henry II.

1808: The 17th president of the United States, Andrew Johnson, is born in Raleigh, N.C.

1812: During the War of 1812, the American frigate USS Constitution engages and severely damages the British frigate HMS Java off Brazil.

1845: Texas is admitted as the 28th state.

1890: The Wounded Knee massacre takes place in South Dakota as an estimated 300 Sioux Indians are killed by U.S. troops sent to disarm them.

1913: The first true “cliffhanger” movie serial, “The Adventures of Kathlyn,” starring Kathlyn Williams, premieres.

1916: Grigory Rasputin, the so-called “Mad Monk” who’d wielded great influence with Czar Nicholas II, is killed by a group of Russian noblemen in St. Petersburg.

1934: Japan formally renounces the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922.

1940: During World War II, Germany drops incendiary bombs on London, setting off what comes to be known as “The Second Great Fire of London.”

1957: Singers Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme are married in Las Vegas.

1972: Eastern Air Lines Flight 401, a Lockheed L-1011 Tristar, crashes into the Florida Everglades near Miami International Airport, killing 101 of the 176 people aboard.

1975: A bomb explodes in the main terminal of New York’s LaGuardia Airport, killing 11 people.

1986: Former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan dies at his home south of London at 92.

2003: Monsignor Michael Courtney, Pope John Paul II’s ambassador in Burundi, is shot and killed by unidentified gunmen.

2012: Maine’s same-sex marriage law went into effect.

Shocked Indians mourn the death of a woman who’d been gang-raped and beaten on a bus in New Delhi nearly two weeks earlier; six suspects were charged with murder. (Four were later sentenced to death; one died in prison; the sixth, a juvenile at the time of the attack, was sentenced to a maximum of three years in a reform home.)

VINDICATOR FILES

1988: Anne Bloomberg, spokesman for the Ohio Lottery Commission, says the winning Super Lotto ticket worth $6 million was sold in the Niles area, but the winner has not yet come forward.

The Youngstown Parking Deck, long characterized as a “white elephant”, is sold by the city to the Tri-State Plaza Limited Partnership for $2.7 million.

A new style of Arby’s Restaurants will be built in Hubbard at U.S. Route 62 and state Route 7. It will be the ninth Arby’s owned by Tallyrand Inc., a local franchise owned by Joseph Smaltz.

1973: Hundreds of workers at Cleveland, Elyria and Mansfield General Motors plants will be affected by mass layoffs announced by the company, but there will be no cutbacks at the Lordstown complex.

Steelmakers, including Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., U.S. Steel Corp. and Copperweld Specialty Steel Co., will increase their prices by as much as $30 a ton to reflect rising scrap metal prices.

The Youngstown Symphony Society and Ballet Western Reserve treat an audience of 1,600 adults and children to a beautiful production of “The Nutcracker” ballet.

1963: Ajax Magnethermic Corp. and Sharon Steel Corp. have contracts for hangars at the Youngstown Municipal Airport, which will be built as soon as the weather breaks.

Youngstown district steel mills are beginning to juggle their inventories of raw and finished steel with the help of electronic brains to smooth out the peaks and valleys of their business cycles.

Dr. Jack Schreiber of Canfield takes the helm of the 300-member Mahoning County Medical Society. He’s the youngest president in the history of the organization.

1938: Miss Eleanor Heedy, 264 Broadway, widely known for her work with the Monday Musical Club, dies in Cleveland while spending the holidays with a nephew.

I. Lamont Hughes, former general superintendent of the Youngstown district for Carnegie Steel Co. and later president of Carnegie Steel Co. at Pittsburgh, now retired, is under consideration for the post of secretary of highways under Gov.-elect Arthur H. James of Pennsylvania.

Four members of the city fire department are given promotions: Edward Brindle to chief fire alarm operator; Lee T. Johnson, aide to chief; Leroy E. Halstead and Herbert W. Flavell, enginemen.