YEARS AGO

Today is Saturday, Dec. 13, the 347th day of 2014. There are 18 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1642: Dutch navigator Abel Tasman sights present-day New Zealand.

1769: Dartmouth College in New Hampshire receives its charter.

1862: Union forces led by Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside launch futile attacks against entrenched Confederate soldiers during the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg; the soundly defeated Northern troops withdraw two days later.

1918: President Woodrow Wilson arrives in France, becoming the first president to visit Europe while in office.

1928: George Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” has its premiere at Carnegie Hall in New York.

1937: The Chinese city of Nanjing falls to Japanese forces; what followed is a massacre of war prisoners, soldiers and citizens. (China maintains as many as 300,000 people died; Japan says the toll was far less.)

1944: During World War II, the light cruiser USS Nashville is badly damaged in a Japanese kamikaze attack off Negros Island in the Philippines that claimed 133 lives.

1962: The United States launches Relay 1, a communications satellite, which retransmits television, telephone and digital signals.

1974: George Harrison visits the White House, where he meets President Gerald Ford.

1981: Authorities in Poland impose martial law in a crackdown on the Solidarity labor movement. (Martial law formally ended in 1983.)

VINDICATOR FILES

1989: Niles police, who were handing out 100 $50 tickets a month to motorists who parked in spots reserved for the handicapped have reduced that number to 15 or 20 as motorists realize that the city is serious about enforcing the law.

Pro-choice and anti-abortion protesters face off outside Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Youngstown where Democratic gubernatorial candidate Anthony J. Celebrezze Jr. was explaining to supporters his recent conversion to a pro-choice position.

A Boardman big game hunter, Andrew A. Samuels Jr., 51, is indicted on federal charges of importing wild animals listed as endangered species.

1974: Michael A. Samuels, son of Mrs. Myrrel Perenyi of Liberty Township and the late Lou E. Samuels, is nominated by President Ford as ambassador to Sierra Leone, West Africa.

The Packard Electric Division of General Motors announces another 1,000 layoffs due to slumping auto sales, bringing total layoffs to 3,500 and dropping the active workforce to 9,000.

Repairs are underway at the Pointview Ballroom at Western Reserve Road and Route 62 where high winds buckled the walls and caused a slump in the roof. Damage is estimated at $68,000.

1964: The Cleveland Browns trounce the New York Giants, 52-20, and clinch a playoff berth in a game that saw Lou Groza make eight perfect placekicks.

John J. Power Jr., vice president of “Automatic” Sprinkler Corp. of America is elected company president, succeeding J.A. Coakley Jr., who resigned.

Youngstown University extends its winning streak to five games by defeating Lawrence Tech of Detroit, 74-65.

1939: Four women and a man are burned or injured as they jump from the second floor of a blazing beer parlor at 2053 S. Main Avenue in Warren.

Mayor Lionel Evans is honored by 650 people at a testimonial dinner at the YMCA, marking 35 years of service to the city.

Joseph Polifrone, 56, shoots and kills his wife, Rosie, 39, in the bedroom of their W. Maple St. home in Lisbon and then kills himself.