YEARS AGO

Today is Wednesday, Dec. 17, the 351st day of 2014. There are 14 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1777: France recognizes American independence.

1865: Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 8, known as the “Unfinished” (because only two movements had been completed) is first performed publicly in Vienna, 37 years after the composer’s death.

1903: Wilbur and Orville Wright of Dayton, Ohio, conduct the first successful manned powered-airplane flights near Kitty Hawk, N.C., using their experimental craft, the Wright Flyer.

1925: Col. William “Billy” Mitchell is convicted at his court-martial in Washington of insubordination for accusing senior military officials of incompetence and criminal negligence; he is suspended from active duty.

1939: The German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee is scuttled by its crew, ending the World War II Battle of the River Plate off Uruguay.

1944: The U.S. War Department announces it is ending its policy of excluding people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast.

1957: The United States successfully test-fires the Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time.

VINDICATOR FILES

1989: Monte N. Friedkin, a Youngstown native living in Florida, is tapped by Ron Brown, Democratic National Committee chairman, to be finance committee chairman for the national party.

Over a period of six months, four women have been killed in Mahoning County and one near Hillsville, Pa., and police believe a murderer may be stalking prostitutes.

Mark Pelini, Ohio State’s junior defensive back from Cardinal Mooney, is selected as the top scholar athlete from Northeast Ohio on the OSU squad by the Ohio State alumni Association of Cleveland.

1974: A dynamite explosion at Sill’s Tailors & Tuxedo Rental at 68 Boardman-Poland Road, across from the Southern Park Mall, rocks the Boardman business district.

Riding a four-year crest of soaring profits, U.S. Steel Corp. is raising steel prices an average of 8 percent over two-thirds of its product line.

Maj. Karl Munroe, director of the Salvation Army in Youngstown, says his agency has received 1,400 applications for Christmas assistance from area families.

1964: Ohio Edison will spend $25 million in the Youngstown area to expand new lines, especially to the General Motors plant area in Lordstown and to modernize downtown Youngstown’s lighting system.

The Youngstown Public Library awards contracts for building the Poland Branch Library at a cost of $89,639.

1939: The U.S. Department of Commerce releases figures showing that Youngstown is above average in prosperity, accounting for .1896 percent of the nation’s business, with a population of only .1385 percent.

A crowd estimated at its height at 50,000 people descends on downtown Youngstown on the second-nearest Saturday before Christmas.