YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

Today is Thursday, Dec. 31, the 365th and final day of 2015.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1775: During the Revolutionary War, the British repulse an attack by Continental Army generals Richard Montgomery and Benedict Arnold at Quebec; Montgomery is killed.

1879: Thomas Edison first publicly demonstrates his electric incandescent light in Menlo Park, N.J.

1904: New York’s Times Square has its first New Year’s Eve celebration, with an estimated 200,000 people in attendance.

1946: President Harry S. Truman officially proclaims the end of hostilities in World War II.

1969: Joseph A. Yablonski, an unsuccessful candidate for the presidency of the United Mine Workers of America, is shot to death with his wife and daughter in their Clarksville, Pa., home by hitmen acting on the orders of UMWA President Tony Boyle.

1972: Major League baseball player Roberto Clemente, 38, is killed when a plane he’d chartered and was traveling on to bring relief supplies to earthquake-devastated Nicaragua crashes shortly after takeoff from Puerto Rico.

1985: Singer Rick Nelson, 45, and six other people are killed when fire breaks out aboard a DC-3 that was taking the group to a New Year’s Eve performance in Dallas.

1986: Ninety-seven people are killed when fire breaks out in the Dupont Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico. (Three hotel workers later pleaded guilty in connection with the blaze.)

1999: Russian President Boris Yeltsin announces his resignation (he was succeeded by Vladimir Putin).

2005: In central Indonesia, suspected Islamic militants set off a powerful bomb at a busy market frequented by Christians, killing seven people.

2010: Tornadoes fueled by unusually warm air pummel the South and Midwest, killing a total of eight people in Arkansas and Missouri.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation closes Pa. Route 488 at Ellport in Lawrence County after an inch and a half of rain causes dirt from a hillside to plunge onto the road.

After years of debate, Hartford Township trustees resolve a zoning dispute over the operation of a brine-disposal well operated by Omega Oil Co. located in low lands near Yankee Creek. The company acknowledges that it should not have located the well on land zoned for agricultural use and will pay the township a small monetary sum.

1975: Two 18-year-old men, both suspects in an armed robbery at the Greyhound Bus Lines terminal at 529 W. Federal St., are wounded in a hail of bullets from Youngstown police officers shortly after the robbery.

The Rev. David Robinson asks Youngstown City Council to investigate allegations of police brutality against youths during a Nov. 2 disturbance at the Paramount Theater but refuses to answer any questions about the group he said he represents, Citizens Against Police Brutality.

Columbus Linden-McKinley, the Ohio Triple AAA champs, defeat Boardman High’s cagers, 66-54, before a capacity crowd of 3,000 at the Spartan gym.

1965: Atty. Joseph Schiavone is named to the Civil Service Commission, succeeding Irwin Ferencak.

David G. Kampfer takes office as Columbiana village’s first Republican mayor in more than a decade.

East Palestine’s Chamber of Commerce will send delegates to a meeting in Lisbon in January to help select a site for a proposed Columbiana airport.

1940: Residents voice vigorous objection to construction of a Warner Brothers theater at Belmont and Francisca avenues unless ample provisions are made for parking.

Police Chief John Turnbull warns that the Youngstown traffic division will be on special patrol New Year’s Eve for reckless and drunken drivers.

Lowellville Village Council approves an increase in the salaries of night policemen from $140 to $150 a month and the city hall custodian from $100 to $110.