YEARS AGO

Today is Wednesday, Dec. 23, the 357th day of 2015. There are eight days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1788: Maryland passes an act to cede an area “not exceeding 10 miles square” for the seat of the national government; about two-thirds of the area became the District of Columbia.

1823: The poem “Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas” is published anonymously in the Troy (New York) Sentinel; the verse, more popularly known as “’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” is later attributed to Clement C. Moore.

1893: The Engelbert Humperdinck opera “Haensel und Gretel” is first performed in Weimar, Germany.

1913: The Federal Reserve System is created as President Woodrow Wilson signs the Federal Reserve Act.

1928: The National Broadcasting Company sets up a permanent, coast-to-coast network.

1933: President Franklin D. Roosevelt restores the civil rights of about 1,500 people who’d been jailed for opposing the (First) World War.

1941: During World War II, American forces on Wake Island surrender to the Japanese.

1948: Former Japanese premier Hideki Tojo and six other Japanese war leaders are executed in Tokyo.

1954: The first successful human kidney transplant takes place at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston as a surgical team removes a kidney from 23-year-old Ronald Herrick and implants it in Herrick’s twin brother, Richard.

1968: Eighty-two crew members of the U.S. intelligence ship Pueblo are released by North Korea, 11 months after they had been captured.

1975: Richard S. Welch, the Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Athens, is shot and killed outside his home by the militant group November 17.

1986: The experimental airplane Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, completes the first nonstop, nonrefueled round-the-world flight as it returns safely to Edwards Air Force Base in California.

1995: A fire in Dabwali, India, kills 446 people, more than half of them children, during a year-end party near the children’s school.

2005: Chad declares itself in a “state of belligerence” with Sudan, accusing its neighbor of aggression.

2010: Mail bombs blamed on anarchists explode at the Swiss and Chilean embassies in Rome, seriously wounding two people.

2014: The movie “The Interview” is put back into theaters when Sony Pictures Entertainment announces a limited release of the comedy that had provoked an international incident with North Korea and outrage over its canceled showing.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: A recycling program in Grove City, Pa., has reduced the monthly garbage bills for borough households from $9.90 a month to $7.20.

Mahoning and Trumbull counties maintain two draft boards each that meet once a year for training, but would have to meet regularly to rule on requests for service exemptions if the draft is reinstated.

Classrooms in Village Elementary School in Canfield that have not been used since 1974 are being painted, and the school will be reopened to handle the district’s increasing enrollment.

1975: Serious crime in Youngstown dips 7.9 percent during the first nine months of the year compared with a national hike of 11 percent, according to the FBI.

The Supreme Court of the United States notifies Atty. Joseph E. Vouros, Youngstown’s assistant law director, that the court is considering whether to hear the city’s appeal of a common pleas court ruling that found Youngstown’s residency rule for municipal employees unconstitutional.

Police believe a car bombing in the 4000 block of Market Street was a diversion for a “highly professional” robbery of the Dollar Bank’s Southern Park Mall branch at the same time.

1965: Youngstown area residents can expect Florida-like weather on Christmas with mild temperatures and rain. In 1964, Christmas Eve temperatures of 63 and Christmas Day temperatures of 60 tied records set in 1955.

Theodore C. Baxley of Youngstown is re-elected president of the Eastern Orthodox Men’s Society of Greater Youngstown.

Republic Steel Corp.’s R.F. Armitage announces that Ed Keifer is named superintendent of the Warren plant’s mechanical department, and M.H. Hutson is the assistant superintendent.

1940: The weather bureau puts a damper on chances for a white Christmas, predicting light rain.

A dog owned by William Frye of Sharon, Pa., scatters straw from his bed near a furnace, sparking a fire that causes smoke damage to the Florence Street home.

About 2,000 children are expected to attend the Campbell Christmas party at the Gordon School recreational center. The party is sponsored by Campbell Welfare Association and the Board of Education.

The 7th District Court of Appeals upholds a ruling by Mahoning County Common Pleas Judge David G. Jenkins that invalidated Youngstown’s licensing of marble boards. More than 600 machines had been registered in the city, and $13,000 in fees was collected.