Today is Wednesday, Dec. 7, the 342nd day of 2016. There are 24 days left in the year.

Today is Wednesday, Dec. 7, the 342nd day of 2016. There are 24 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

43 B.C.: Roman statesman and scholar Marcus Tullius Cicero is slain at the order of the Second Triumvirate.

1787: Delaware becomes the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

1941: Imperial Japan’s navy launches a pre-emptive attack on the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, one of a series of raids in the Pacific. The United States would declare war against Japan the next day.

1946: Fire breaks out at the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta; the blaze kills 119 people, including hotel founder W. Frank Winecoff.

1965: Pope Paul VI and Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras I simultaneously lift the mutual excommunications that had led to the split of their churches in 1054.

1987: Forty-three people are killed after a gunman aboard a Pacific Southwest Airlines jetliner in California apparently opens fire on a fellow passenger, the pilots and himself, causing the plane to crash.

1993: Gunman Colin Ferguson opens fire on a Long Island Rail Road commuter train, killing six people and wounding 19.

2011: Rod Blagojevich, the ousted Illinois governor whose three-year battle against criminal charges became a national spectacle, is sentenced to 14 years in prison.

2015: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump calls for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

VINDICATOR FILES

1991: The Cafaro Co. announces that a Cleveland-based grocery chain, Finast, will open a store on U.S. Route 422 across from Eastwood Mall.

Columbiana County will get a $750,000 state grant to convert the county nursing home into a minimum-security jail.

Earl Barkley, a 68-year-old retired truck driver from New Waterford, is guest speaker at the 50th Pearl Harbor Day anniversary observance at the Mahoning County Courthouse. He was stationed aboard the USS Whitney in Pearl Harbor the day of the Japanese attack.

1976: A Volkswagen that was nudged by a larger car in I-680 skids out of control and flips into a utility pole, nearly cutting the car in half. But the driver, Charles McCauley, 35, escapes with injuries that left him in satisfactory condition in South Side Hospital.

Gov. James A. Rhodes signs a law expanding Ohio’s charitable bingo law to permit operation of games to certain veteran groups and others.

Ohio State Highway Patrolman Stephen R. Horsley is selected “Trooper of the Year” at the Canfield Post of the Ohio State Highway Patrol.

1966: Ann Amrich, 77, is in fair condition in South Side Hospital after being struck by a car and dragged 60 feet as she attempted to cross Market Street at Marion Avenue.

Maintenance and custodial employees are manning picket lines at the Youngstown Metropolitan Housing Authority’s four projects.

Southern Local School District officials plan public meetings at the high school to discuss plans to close three buildings after the defeat of a school levy.

Paul Grim, a senior at Springfield Local High School, wins the Bausch & Lomb Science Award.

1941: U.S. Sen. Gerald P. Nye, R-N.D., tells an America First committee in Columbus that the American people have been betrayed by a march toward war and that President Roosevelt has attempted to provoke the Axis powers.

The cornerstone for the new addition to Trinity Methodist Church will be laid Dec. 14. The addition includes a community chapel and a new carillon.

Esther Hamilton’s “Alias Santa Claus” show is a huge success as 2,600 people pack Stambaugh Auditorium for a 15-act vaudeville show. Top-selling “candy butcher” is Fire Chief Michael Melillo with $637.