YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

Today is Friday, Dec. 11, the 345th day of 2015. There are 20 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:.

1792: France’s King Louis XVI goes before the Convention to face charges of treason. (Louis was convicted, and was executed the following month.)

1816: Indiana becomes the 19th state.

1844: The first experimental use of an inhaled anesthetic in dentistry takes place as Dr. Horace Wells of Hartford, Conn., under the influence of nitrous oxide, has a colleague extract one of his teeth.

1936: Britain’s King Edward VIII abdicates the throne so he can marry American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson; his brother, Prince Albert, becomes King George VI.

1941: Germany and Italy declare war on the United States; the U.S. responds in kind.

1946: The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund is established.

1964: Che Guevara addresses the United Nations; in his speech, the Argentine revolutionary declares that “the final hour of colonialism has struck.”

1972: Apollo 17’s lunar module lands on the moon with astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt aboard; during three extravehicular activities, they become the last two men to date to step onto the lunar surface.

1980: President Jimmy Carter signs legislation creating a $1.6 billion environmental “superfund” to pay for cleaning up chemical spills and toxic- waste dumps.

1997: More than 150 countries agree at a global warming conference in Kyoto, Japan, to control the Earth’s greenhouse gases.

2008: Bernie Madoff is arrested, accused of running a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme. (Madoff is serving a 150-year federal prison sentence.)

2010: The eldest son of disgraced financier Bernard Madoff, 46-year-old Mark Madoff, hangs himself in his Manhattan apartment on the second anniversary of his father’s arrest.

A U.N. conference in Cancun, Mexico, adopts a modest climate deal.

2014: CIA Director John Brennan, responding to a U.S. Senate torture report, acknowledges that “abhorrent tactics” were used on terror detainees but says it was “unknown and unknowable” whether the harsh treatment yielded crucial intelligence that could have been gained in any other way.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: The space shuttle Columbia touches down in the Mojave Desert, bringing home Warren native Ron Parise and his fellow astronauts a day early.

A Vindicator investigation of the renovation of the Mahoning County Courthouse shows that a decision by county commissioners to do the project in piecemeal fashion contributed to increasing the cost from $4.2 million to $8 million.

Al Alli, chairman of United Auto Workers Local 1112 at Lordstown, says the company has decided to build its 1994 J-car at Lordstown. GM officials in Detroit won’t confirm that a decision has been made.

1975: Youngstown’s 3rd Ward Councilman Emanuel Catsoules proposes increasing the size of the Youngstown Police Department and the number of supervisory officers at a cost of more than $250,000.

Thomas A. Murphy, chairman of General Motors Corp., says his company is looking forward to 1976 as one of the “best years in the history of the [auto] industry.”

Mrs. Betty Benjamin is installed as president of the Youngstown Retired Teachers Association during a meeting at the Sokol Club.

1965: Andy Kosco of the Major League Baseball Minnesota Twins will be working in the sporting-goods department of the downtown Strouss- Hirshberg store during the winter months.

Mahoning County commissioners are risking being held in contempt of court by the Ohio Supreme Court, which has ordered the commissioners to provide more space in the courthouse for a law library.

United Mine Workers union members approve a three-year contract with Carbon Limestone Co., ending a 62-day strike that closed the quarries near Hillsville, Pa., and idled 150 employees.

1940: Martin Dies, chairman of the congressional committee on un-American activities, will speak to the Mahoning Valley Foremen’s Association.

Denied a plea for mercy, Emil Rosovitz, 31, is sentenced by Judge Erskine Maiden to death in the electric chair at the Ohio State Penitentiary for the Aug. 31 killing of John V. Donnelly during an attempted holdup at the Italian-American Educational Club on Mahoning Avenue.

The United Mine Workers of America, denied permission to participate directly in the investigation into the Nelms mine disaster near Cadiz, Ohio, that killed 31 coal miners, says it will pursue state legislation that would give miners the right to question witnesses.