YEARS AGO

Today is Sunday, Nov. 30, the 334th day of 2014. There are 31 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1782: The United States and Britain sign preliminary peace articles in Paris, ending the Revolutionary War.

1803: Spain completes the process of ceding Louisiana to France, which had sold it to the United States.

1835: Samuel Langhorne Clemens — better known as Mark Twain — is born in Florida, Mo.

1874: British statesman Sir Winston Churchill is born at Blenheim Palace.

1900: Irish writer Oscar Wilde dies in Paris at age 46.

1936: London’s famed Crystal Palace, constructed for the Great Exhibition of 1851, is destroyed in a fire.

1954: Ann Elizabeth Hodges of Oak Grove, Ala., is slightly injured when an 81/2-pound chunk of meteor crashes through the roof of her house.

1982: The Michael Jackson album “Thriller” is released by Epic Records.

1994: The cruise ship MS Achille Lauro catches fire off the coast of Somalia; two passengers die during the evacuation of the vessel. It sank two days later.

2004: Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announces his resignation.

“Jeopardy!” fans see Ken Jennings end his 74-game winning streak as he loses to Nancy Zerg.

2009: Retired Ohio auto worker John Demjanjuk goes on trial in Munich, Germany, accused of helping to kill 27,900 Jews as a Nazi death camp guard. (Demjanjuk was convicted; he died in March 2012 at age 91.)

VINDICATOR FILES

1989: Youngstown officials, in the market for more vacant industrial land, want to buy USX Corp.’s Ohio Works property southeast of Brier Hill.

Keith and Janet Ericsson are the new parents of three boys and a girl, Bryan, Brandon, Bradley and Brianne, the first quadruplets known to be born at St. Elizabeth Hospital.

A 16-year-old Rayen student is being held for questioning in the wounding of Robert E. Allen, a Shaw High School basketball coach, who was injured in the leg by a bullet fired at the team bus as it was leaving South High School following a game.

1974: General Motors is switching its Vega-assembly line in Southgate, Calif., to other models, leaving the Lordstown plant as the only one assembling the Vega. Lordstown turns out about 75 Vegas and 25 Astres an hour.

Five members of the J.J. Ragan family narrowly escape asphyxiation from a gas leak in their Poland home after relatives become concerned that telephone calls were not being answered and broke a window to enter the house. The Ragans and their three children, 2 to 5, were revived before being taken to a hospital.

About 1,000 people greet Santa Claus who arrives on a Youngstown and Southern Railway caboose at the Indianola Avenue crossing for the Uptown business district’s Christmas parade.

1964: Four Youngstown district people die in traffic accidents over the four-day holiday weekend. They are Samuel Weingart, 20, of Berlin Center; Barbara Ann Karr, 23, of Warren; Laura B.. Loop, 82, of Salem, and Sam Richeson, 85, of Alliance.

The Youngstown area gets about an inch of wet snow, leaving the streets slippery, but causing no major traffic tie-ups.

1939: A strike by 85 members of the Youngstown Typographical Union No. 200 causes cancellation of four editions, but is settled in time to print one edition. It is the first strike in the newspaper’s 70-year history.

More than 150 of about 775 people who have received treatment at the city municipal hospital venereal disease clinic have been cured or are nearly ready to be discharged, says Dr. Wallace W. Ryall, city health commissioner.

At the age of 80, Bert Printz continues to come to his W. Federal Street clothing store each day and to take an active role in the Printz store in Warren and five others in New York and Pennsylvania.