YEARS AGO

Today is Sunday, Dec. 13, the 347th day of 2015. There are 18 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1642: Dutch navigator Abel Tasman sights present-day New Zealand.

1918: President Woodrow Wilson arrives in France, becoming the first chief executive to visit Europe while in office.

1928: George Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” has its premiere at Carnegie Hall in New York.

1944: During World War II, the light cruiser USS Nashville is badly damaged in a Japanese kamikaze attack off Negros Island in the Philippines that claims 133 lives.

2000: Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore concedes to Republican George W. Bush, a day after the U.S. Supreme Court shut down further recounts in Florida.

2003: Saddam Hussein is captured by U.S. forces while hiding in a hole under a farmhouse in Adwar, Iraq, near his hometown of Tikrit.

2010: President Barack Obama’s historic health care overhaul hits its first major legal roadblock as a federal judge declares that the law’s central requirement is unconstitutional.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: After nine days in space aboard the troubled space shuttle Columbia, Warren native Ronald Parise tells The Vindicator’s Cynthia Vinarsky that he wants to go up again.

Ohio Gov.-elect George Voinovich rejects calls for higher taxes and education spending, saying people making those requests must have had cotton in their ears during the election campaign.

Hubbard Township Police Chief Howard Bradley says his 16-member department was receiving $1,500 worth of free food per month from McDonald’s before the restaurant asked the officers to ease up on their orders.

1975: William M. Cafaro, chairman of the Cafaro Co., announces plans to build a large new shopping development adjacent to the Eastwood Mall, on a 25-acre site east of the Montgomery Ward department store.

The Humane Society and Austintown police are investigating the savage killing of nine show rabbits that were taken from their pens from behind the homes of Ronald Kuyat, 17, and Gary Mayyou, 15, on Webb Road.

Waterford Park sets a West Virginia racing record when the track’s 1975 mutual handle exceeds $1 million. There are 10 days remaining in the 308-day racing season.

1965: David Vorkapich and Richard Cole, both of Campbell, receive Eagle Scout awards at St. John the Baptist Russian Orthodox Church.

Chester W. Haenny of East Palestine, who operated an engineering firm, Haenny & Associates, dies in Salem City Hospital after a short illness.

Luther Pierce, 7, a non-swimmer, drowns in the headwaters of Lake Glacier after falling from a rock while fishing with two young friends.

1940: Kane Bros. Co., contracted for widening East Federal Street between Walnut and Basin streets, notifies the board of control that it will do no further work because of the city’s failure to move several buildings on the south side of the street.

Alice Armstrong of Youngstown, a junior in music studies at Lake Erie College, will play the harp accompaniment for choral selections at the college’s Christmas vesper service.

Sen. Robert A. Taft, R-Ohio, proposes that income tax rates be lowered from 75 to 50 percent on higher brackets and increased from 4 percent to 10 percent for low brackets.