YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

Today is Wednesday, Dec. 2, the 336th day of 2015. There are 29 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1804: Napoleon crowns himself emperor of the French.

1823: President James Monroe outlines his doctrine opposing European expansion in the Western Hemisphere.

1859: Militant abolitionist John Brown is hanged for his raid on Harpers Ferry the previous October.

1927: Ford Motor Co. unveils its Model A automobile, which replaces its Model T.

1939: New York Municipal Airport-LaGuardia Field (later LaGuardia Airport) goes into operation as an airliner from Chicago lands at one minute past midnight.

1942: An artificially created, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction is demonstrated for the first time at the University of Chicago.

1954: The U.S. Senate passes, 67-22, a resolution condemning Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, R-Wis., saying he has “acted contrary to senatorial ethics and tended to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.”

1961: Cuban leader Fidel Castro declares himself a Marxist-Leninist who eventually would lead Cuba to communism.

1970: The newly created Environmental Protection Agency opens its doors; its first director is William D. Ruckelshaus.

1980: Four American churchwomen are raped and murdered outside San Salvador. (Five El Salvador national guardsmen later were convicted of murdering nuns Ita Ford, Maura Clarke and Dorothy Kazel, and lay worker Jean Donovan.)

1982: In the first operation of its kind, doctors at the University of Utah Medical Center implant a permanent artificial heart in the chest of retired dentist Dr. Barney Clark, who lived 112 days with the device.

1990: Composer Aaron Copland dies in North Tarrytown, N.Y., at age 90, and actor Bob Cummings dies in Woodland Hills, Calif., at age 80.

1995: NASA launches the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, a joint project of the United States and the European Space Agency, on a $1 billion mission to study the sun and interplanetary space; since then, SOHO has discovered 3,000 comets.

2005: North Carolina inmate Kenneth Lee Boyd becomes the 1,000th person executed since the U.S. resumed capital punishment in 1977.

2010: The House votes, 333-79, to censure Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., for financial and fundraising misconduct; it is only the 23rd time that the House has invoked its most-serious punishment short of expulsion.

LeBron James scores 38 points to lead the visiting Miami Heat to a 118-90 victory over the host Cleveland Cavaliers; it is James’ first game back in the city where he had played for seven years before leaving via free agency.

2014: Israel’s divided government falls apart as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fires two rebellious Cabinet ministers and calls for a new election more than two years ahead of schedule.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: Girard city officials and TCI Cablevision of Ohio will meet to discuss Mayor Joseph Christopher’s request that MTV, the music television channel, be blacked out in the city.

Patrick F. McCarthy, a graduate of Cardinal Mooney and Kent State, receives his juris doctorate from the Ohio University College of Law and passes the Ohio Bar exam. He will practice law in Columbus.

A study of six months of sick leave taken by Warren police officers and firefighters who plan to retire showed that during that period, all but two of 15 policemen took a month off, 10 took at least two months, and five took at least three months. Of 13 firefighters, all but one took at least a week, seven took at least two months and four took at least three months. All told, they took 13,000 hours of sick leave, the equivalent of 51/2 years of full-time work.

1975: The Youngstown Metropolitan Housing Authority has its longest waiting list for housing in the past five years, with 665 elderly applicants and 420 families.

Ohio State Buckeye Archie Griffin, the 1974 Heisman trophy winner, is one of four college players to be named for a second year to the Associated Press All-American team.

A Trumbull County Common Pleas Court ruling upholding Hubbard High School’s dress code that limits hair length will be appealed to the 11th District Court of Appeals by the two Hubbard parents who challenged the legality of the code, Edward Mann and John Kraynak.

1965: Several tons of clothing collected in a clothing drive catches fire at Immaculate Heart of Mary School in Austintown, causing $20,000 in damage.

Youngstown University expands its police department to 10 officers in the wake of the kidnapping of a coed in October and other crimes.

Atty. Gerald F. Hammond, 84, who practiced law in Youngstown for 57 years, dies in Buffalo, N.Y., after surgery.

The Youngstown Humane Society and Board of Health say an investigation of an Austintown kennel shows that 15 dogs have died there. Seven other dogs are alive but suffering malnutrition.

1940: A statewide medical service program to provide medical and surgical care for low-income people at minimal cost is favored by most area medical men, a prominent Youngstown physician says.

Four Youngstown X-ray specialists are among 1,000 doctors at the 26th convention of the Radiological Society of North America in Cleveland: Drs. Samuel Tamarkin, Edgar C. Baker, John Heberding and John Brackin.

Ray Hagstrom, director of Christ Mission, speaks at the mortgage burning at Bethlehem Third Reformed Church.