YEARS AGO

Today is Tuesday, Dec. 16, the 350th day of 2014. There are 15 days left in the year. The Jewish Festival of Lights, Hanukkah, begins at sunset.

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On this date in:

1653: Oliver Cromwell becomes lord protector of England, Scotland and Ireland.

1773: The Boston Tea Party takes place as American colonists board a British ship and dump more than 300 chests of tea into Boston Harbor to protest tea taxes.

1809: The French Senate grants a divorce decree to Emperor Napoleon I and Empress Josephine (the dissolution was made final the following month).

1811: The first of the powerful New Madrid earthquakes strikes the central Mississippi Valley with an estimated magnitude of 7.7.

1907: Sixteen U.S. Navy battleships, which come to be known as the “Great White Fleet,” set sail on a 14-month round-the-world voyage to demonstrate American sea power.

1930: Golfer Bobby Jones becomes the first recipient of the James E. Sullivan Award honoring outstanding amateur athletes.

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1989: The Youngstown State University Board of Trustees clears the way for a five-year contract with football coach Jim Tressel that will pay him $65,000 a year.

The Ohio Board of Regents recommends that the state’s next capital budget includes $12 million for improvements at YSU and $1.2 million for Kent State branch campuses in Trumbull and Columbiana counties.

The Campbell Firefighters Association wins more than $55,000 back pay for its members in a lawsuit claiming that the city did not honor wage rates that it had negotiated with the union.

1974: The bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Marsh and their 4-year-old daughter Heather are found in their home at 5540 Turner Road in Canfield. The parents had been shot and the child beaten. A one-year-old son is hospitalized.

Rabbi Jordan I. Taxon is installed as spiritual leader of Ohev-Tzedek Temple.

Ron Jaworski, a Youngs-town State product, scores his first touchdown of the season for the Los Angeles Rams in a 19-14 victory over the Buffalo bills.

1964: Dr. Frederick A. Resch is elected president-elect of the Mahoning County Medical Society. Dr. John J. McDonough will succeed Dr. Jack Schreiber as president in January.

Leon Beeghly, founder of Standard Slag Co. of Youngstown, gives $100,000 to Thiel College in Greenville, Pa., the largest gift in the school’s history.

The Youngstown Committee on Alcoholism opens a drive for $160,500 to build a modern, 40-bed clinic and information center.

1939: The Youngstown Chamber of Commerce intends to write a letter to Time magazine disputing the magazine’s inclusion of Youngstown among Ohio cities in “dire distress.” The chamber says Mahoning County has never had a “relief crisis” and no one is “starving.”

“Brownie,” a St. Bernard from Hartford, Ohio, who appeared in “The Milky Way” put on by the Sharon Players at First Presbyterian Church, left after appearing on stage, and, while police and members of the cast searched for him for several hours, walked the eight miles to his home.

Our Lady of Hungary Hungarian Roman Catholic parish on Belle Vista Avenue celebrates its 10th anniversary with church ceremonies and a banquet.