YEARS AGO

Today is Friday, Dec. 16, the 351st day of 2016. There are 15 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1653: Oliver Cromwell becomes lord protector of England, Scotland and Ireland.

1773: The Boston Tea Party takes place as American colonists board a British ship and dump more than 300 chests of tea into Boston Harbor to protest tea taxes.

1944: World War II Battle of the Bulge begins as German forces launch a surprise attack against Allied forces through the Ardennes Forest in Belgium and Luxembourg (the Allies were eventually able to turn the Germans back).

1960: Some 134 people are killed when a United Air Lines DC-8 and a TWA Super Constellation collide over New York City.

2006: Time magazine names everyone using or creating content on the World Wide Web its “Person of the Year.”

2011: Former Penn State graduate assistant Mike McQueary testifies that he believes he saw ex-assistant coach Jerry Sandusky molesting a boy and that he fully conveyed what he had seen to two Penn State administrators

2015: The first attempt to find a Baltimore police officer criminally responsible for Freddie Gray’s death from a broken neck in a police van ends with a hung jury and a mistrial in the case of William Porter.

VINDICATOR FILES

1991: A strike by 1,200 medical support workers cripples Western Reserve Care System, which operates North Side, South Side and Tod Children’s hospitals in Youngstown.

NRM Polymer Equipment Corp., recently spun off from NRM Steel in Columbiana County, will locate in the former Ohio Alloys building in Youngstown.

The 100 member Academic Senate at Youngstown State University will revisit the debate over whether the university should convert from academic quarters to semesters.

1976: Youngstown vice squad agents arrest three East Side men in a parked car on East High Avenue about a half hour after a robbery at a Hubbard dairy. Found inside the car were three high-powered guns, $89 in cash and a vial of valium.

Suspended Youngstown Patrolman Ernest Paul is convicted on four counts of simple assault for driving his police cruiser into four fellow officers who were on a picket line outside the police garage on West Boardman Street.

Rockwell International Corp. is planning a $300 million expansion program, including $6.5 million earmarked for its two New Castle, Pa., plants.

1966: The Mahoning County Board of Education votes to prepare an application to establish a comprehensive joint vocational school for at least 12 school districts in the county.

Nearly three fourths of the survey and planning work for a $3.2 million Youngstown Health Center project in the area of St. Elizabeth Hospital area is completed and a $148,577 federal grant is approved.

Congressman Michael Kirwan’s office announces the Department of Health, Education and Welfare grants St. Elizabeth Hospital $127,000 for additional nursing school facilities.

1941: Two Youngstown men reported killed in action on Dec. 7 at Pearl Harbor are John C. McClafferty and Donald Kramer.

Through monetary gifts and sale of property, the Youngstown Players hope to have enough funds to recondition and redecorate the old Ohio Theater on Market Street to be used as a civic auditorium.

The Coconut Grove bowling team bags first-half honors in the Industrial Bowling League, losing only three games of 36 played.