YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

Today is Tuesday, Dec. 8, the 342nd day of 2015. There are 23 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1765: Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin, is born in Westborough, Mass.

1854: Pope Pius IX proclaims the Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which holds that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was free of original sin from the moment of her own conception.

1865: Finnish composer Jean Sibelius is born in Haemeenlinna.

1914: “Watch Your Step,” the first musical revue to feature a score composed entirely by Irving Berlin, opens in New York.

1940: The Chicago Bears defeat the Washington Redskins, 73-0, in the NFL Championship Game, which is carried on network radio for the first time by the Mutual Broadcasting System (the announcer was Red Barber).

1941: The United States enters World War II as Congress declares war against Imperial Japan, a day after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

1949: The Chinese Nationalist government moves from the Chinese mainland to Formosa as the Communists press their attacks.

1962: The first session of the Second Vatican Council is formally adjourned.

Typographers go on a 114-day strike against four New York City newspapers.

1972: A United Airlines Boeing 737 crashes while attempting to land at Chicago-Midway Airport, killing 43 of the 61 people on board, as well as two people on the ground; among the dead are Dorothy Hunt, wife of Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt, U.S. Rep. George W. Collins, D-Ill., and CBS News correspondent Michele Clark.

1980: Rock star John Lennon is shot to death outside his New York City apartment building by an apparently deranged fan.

1987: President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev sign a treaty at the White House calling for destruction of intermediate-range nuclear missiles.

1992: Americans get to see live television coverage of U.S. troops landing on the beaches of Somalia as Operation Restore Hope begins (because of the time difference, it was early Dec. 9 in Somalia).

2005: A Southwest Airlines jet landing at Chicago Midway International Airport during a snowstorm slides off the runway and onto a busy street, killing a boy in a car.

2010: President Barack Obama rejects claims that he had betrayed Democrats by cutting a deal with Republicans on Bush-era tax cuts and implores his party to back the compromise, arguing it could jump-start the economy.

2014: The U.S. and NATO ceremonially end their combat mission in Afghanistan, 13 years after the Sept. 11 terror attacks sparked their invasion of the country to topple the Taliban-led government.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: Nineteen anti-abortion protesters are released after serving 20 days in the Youngstown City Jail. Some vow to return to demonstrations at the Mahoning Women’s Clinic on Market Street, and Judge Patrick Kerrigan warns them to obey the law while demonstrating.

Donnelle Lynn DeSellem, 23, of New Galilee, Pa., faces 10 to 20 years in prison after being found guilty of third-degree murder in the beating death of her 5-year-old son, Michael Scott Giboo on Dec. 19, 1989.

LTV Corp. says it will appeal a federal judge’s order that the company reassume responsibility for pensions for J&L retired employees, contending that the pension fund is out of money.

1975: Edwin Miller of Knauf Road, who was being sought by police in the murder of his mother-in-law, Mildred Smith, 66, of Enon Valley, Pa., and in connection with bombings at four area houses, blows himself to bits behind his trailer home.

Dick Crum, a Youngstown native and graduate of Boardman School, is named Ohio College Coach of the year after leading his Miami of Ohio gridders to the Mid-American Conference championship.

Philadelphia police are looking for three men who robbed and stabbed to death John Shively Knight III, newspaper editor and grandson of the founder of the Knight publishing empire.

1965: The Strouss- Hirshberg Co. plans to more than double the size of its store that was opened in the Edward DeBartolo Co.’s Boardman Plaza in 1963.

Police Sgt. Paul Cress, former head of Youngstown traffic investigation bureau, resigns from the police force to become chief of security and an instructor in police and social science at Youngstown University. Cress is also an ordained minister, having graduated from Missionary Seminary in Nyack, N.Y.

A Mahoning County jury finds Dr. Abraham Armstead, 77, guilty of performing an illegal abortion on a Cleveland woman in his East Side Youngstown office on July 22, 1964.

1940: Vindicator reporter Esther Hamilton’s Alias Santa Claus charity show sets a new high with ticket sales and candy-butcher contributions totaling $5,000. Youngstown City Schools Superintendent Pliny Powers is the most successful candy butcher with $255.75.

A state landscape program provides trees being planted every 75 feet from Forest Glenn to North Lima. In two years, the state has improved 750 miles of state roads with trees, shrubs and other vegetation. \

Congressional districts of Northeastern Ohio, including the 19th district composed of Mahoning, Trumbull and Ashtabula counties, face redistricting on the basis of the 1940 census.