YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

Today is Saturday, Dec. 12, the 346th day of 2015. There are 19 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1787: Pennsylvania becomes the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

1870: Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina becomes the first black lawmaker sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives.

1906: President Theodore Roosevelt nominates Oscar Straus to be secretary of Commerce and Labor; Straus becomes the first Jewish Cabinet member.

1915: Singer-actor Frank Sinatra is born Francis Albert Sinatra in Hoboken, N.J.

1917: Father Edward Flanagan founds Boys Town outside Omaha, Neb.

1925: The first motel – the Motel Inn – opens in San Luis Obispo, Calif.

1937: Japanese aircraft sink the U.S. gunboat Panay on China’s Yangtze River. (Japan apologized, and paid $2.2 million in reparations.)

1946: A United Nations committee votes to accept a six-block tract of Manhattan real estate offered as a gift by John D. Rockefeller Jr. to be the site of the U.N.’s headquarters.

1963: Kenya becomes independent of Britain.

1975: Sara Jane Moore asks a federal court in San Francisco to allow her to plead guilty to trying to kill President Gerald R. Ford.

1985: Some 248 American soldiers and eight crew members are killed when an Arrow Air charter crashes after takeoff from Gander, Newfoundland.

2000: George W. Bush becomes president-elect as a divided U.S. Supreme Court reverses a state court decision for recounts in Florida’s contested election.

2005: California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger refuses to block the imminent execution of Stanley Tookie Williams, rejecting the notion that the founder of the murderous Crips gang had atoned for his crimes and found redemption on death row. (Williams was put to death early the next day.)

2010: An explosives-packed minibus blows up at the entrance of a joint NATO-Afghan base in southern Afghanistan, killing six American troops and two Afghan soldiers as they prepared to head out on patrol.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: Work is halted on construction of the $7 million Wal-Mart store on U.S. Route 62 in Hermitage, Pa., while officials sort out ownership of a 65-foot-wide strip of land adjacent to Holy Trinity Lutheran Church.

Ronald Terrel says he had no choice but to fire on a burglar he confronted in his 90-year-old mother’s house on Youngstown’s North Side. The 23-year-old suspect is in satisfactory condition in St. Elizabeth Hospital.

Republicans on the Mahoning County Board of Elections boycott a recount of votes in the race for Ohio attorney general between Democrat Lee Fisher and Republican Paul Pfeifer until Pfeifer decides what to do about a claim that Fisher gained an unfair advantage in the way names were rotated on the ballot.

1975: The Federal Housing Administration announces that it will build a $1 million, 48-unit moderate-income housing project named Valley View on Youngstown’s East Side.

A Boardman High School senior boy is suspended from school after setting off a firecracker in the cafeteria that left three students with minor injuries.

Thomas W. Bode, a vice president of Selbert, Worly, Kady, Kirk Partners Inc., is elected president of the William Holmes McGuffey Historical Society.

1965: Auxiliary Bishop James W. Malone of the Youngstown Diocese returns from the Vatican Council in Rome saying priests and people will begin working to put into practice what was decided at the council.

J. Victor Carty, president and treasurer of the Ohio Water Service Co., is honored in recognition of his 35 years of service at the company’s annual Christmas party.

When Trumbull County’s new $1.8 million jail is completed, it will not contain living quarters for Sheriff Robert W. Barnett, despite appeals from judges, law-enforcement agencies and officers and the sheriff.

1940: Youngstown Schools Superintendent Pliny Powers announces a shift in “old school” curriculum toward one with more emphasis on social studies.

Donald H. Connolly, administrator of civil aeronautics, announces a grant of $29,992 for elaborate lighting at the Youngstown Municipal Airport that will allow night flying.

R.J. Wean, Warren steel engineer, and Harry Theiss of Louisville patent a new method of galvanizing steel sheets that will save on zinc and reduce manufacturing costs.