YEARS AGO

Today is Friday, Dec. 12, the 346th day of 2014. 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, makes its debut in the New York Journal.

1906: President Theodore Roosevelt nominates Oscar Straus to be 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.

1925: The first motel — the Motel Inn — opens in San Luis Obispo, Calif.

1937: Japanese aircraft sink the U.S. gunboat Panay on China’s Yangtze River. (Japan apologized, and paid $2.2 million in reparations.)

1946: A United Nations committee votes to accept a six-block tract of Manhattan real estate offered as a gift by John D. Rockefeller Jr. to be the site of the U.N.’s headquarters.

1963: Kenya becomes independent of Britain.

1974: “The Godfather, Part II,” a Paramount Pictures release, premieres in New York.

1985: Some 248 American soldiers and eight crew members are killed when an Arrow Air charter crashes after takeoff from Gander, Newfoundland.

2000: George W. Bush becomes president-elect as a divided U.S. Supreme Court reverses a state court decision for recounts in Florida’s contested election.

2004: A bomb explodes in a market in southern Philippines, killing at least 14 people.

2009: Houston elects its first openly gay mayor, with voters handing a solid victory to City Controller Annise Parker after a hotly contested runoff with former city attorney Gene Locke.

2013: The House votes to ease across-the-board federal spending cuts and head off future government shutdowns, acting after Speaker John Boehner unleashes a stinging attack on tea party-aligned conservative groups campaigning for the measure’s defeat.

VINDICATOR FILES

1989: Capt. Fred Moosally, a Youngstown native and commander of the USS Iowa when an explosion killed 47 members of the crew, tells a Senate Armed Services Committee that the explosion was caused by sabotage, but that he doesn’t agree with a Navy investigation’s conclusion that gunner’s mate Clayton Hartwig was the likely culprit.

Warren Police Chief Richard Galgozy says police had to shoot former Church at Warren member Michael Stubbs when he tried to flee from the latest in a series of disturbances between himself and church members. Stubbs is hospitalized in serious condition.

Three Lorain County businessmen propose building a $3 million marina on the East Side of Lake Milton.

1974: Cleveland Beasley, 63, owner of a Pine Avenue SE poolroom, is found shot to death in his auto at a Warren intersection.

The Youngstown Law Department is researching a proposal by Republican Mayor Jack Hunter for legislation that would prohibit the carrying of concealed handguns in Youngstown.

The Rev. Richard W. Braun, pastor of John Knox United Presbyterian Church, is elected moderator of the Eastminster Presbytery during a meeting at Poland United Methodist Church.

1964: The Youngstown Area Chamber of Commerce re-elects seven directors and one new director. Re-elected were R. Burton Kerr, Myron E. Roberts, Carl W. Ullman, Warren P. Williamson Jr., George McCuskey, William B. Pollock and Frank C. Watson. The new director is Raymond H. Lohr.

A statue of the late President Franklin D. Roose-velt surrounded by eight 130-foot-high slabs is planned for Washington. The Roosevelt family is not pleased with the design because FDR had classical tastes.

Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Gray, Peace Corps volunteers, are on their way to East Africa after a short visit with Gray’s mother, Mrs. Theresa Gray, in Girard.

1939: Secretary of State Earl Griffith recommends that the Mahoning County Board of Elections fire 10 workers who manned precinct B of Campbell’s Third Ward, where Griffith says 40 ballots were tampered with in the November board of elections race.

Mahoning County is winning the battle against Tuberculosis, says Dr. E.E. Kirkwood, superintendent of the tuberculosis sanatorium. In 1900, there were 200 tuberculosis deaths per 100,000 population in the county and that was reduced to 40 per 100,000 in 1938.

Edward Earl Smith, 13, of Youngstown has been taking flying lessons at Bernard Airport since he was 11, but can’t fly solo until the age of 16 because of Civil Aeronautics Authority regulations.