YEARS AGO

Today is Wednesday, Dec. 28, the 363rd day of 2016. There are three days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1612: Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei observes the planet Neptune, but mistakes it for a star. (Neptune wasn’t officially discovered until 1846 by Johann Gottfried Galle.)

1846: Iowa becomes the 29th state to be admitted to the Union.

1856: The 28th president of the U.S., Thomas Woodrow Wilson, is born in Staunton, Va.

1945: Congress officially recognizes the Pledge of Allegiance.

1981: Elizabeth Jordan Carr, the first American “test-tube” baby, is born in Norfolk, Va.

2006: President George W. Bush, at his Texas ranch, works on designing a new U.S. policy in Iraq as Saddam Hussein’s lawyer makes a last-ditch effort to impede his client’s execution.

2011: North Korea’s new leader, Kim Jong Un, escorts his father’s hearse in an elaborate state funeral, bowing somberly and saluting in front of tens of thousands of citizens who wail and stamp their feet in grief for Kim Jong Il.

2015: A grand jury in Cleveland declines to indict a white rookie police officer in the killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, a black youngster who was shot while playing with what turned out to be a pellet gun.

VINDICATOR FILES

1991: The Western Reserve Port Authority has eight members and a $300,000 budget, but no date has been set for it to assume responsibility for operation of the Youngstown Municipal Airport.

Lee Zabel says that unless the city demolishes the abandoned Sam’s Cafe building at 651 Market St., he’ll start looking for a new suburban location for his family’s restaurant supply business.

Packard Electric in Warren says it will provide wiring and engine harnesses to Russia’s Volga Auto Works, which is trying to meet world standards for emission controls by 1993.

1976: U.S. Sen. Robert Taft, R-Ohio, says he will step down at the end of the day, allowing Gov. James A. Rhodes to appoint Democrat Howard Metzenbaum, who won the November election, to the seat. The move will give Ohio’s new senator a few days’ seniority over other incoming freshmen.

Outgoing Mahoning County Sheriff Ray T. Davis says he will sue incoming sheriff Mike Yarosh for breach of an oral promise that Davis would have a job in Yarosh’s administration.

Mary Hamill, 79, dies in a fire that gutted the Belvedere Apartments on Cochran Way in New Castle, Pa. The fire was believed to have started when a plastic Christmas tree tipped over against a space heater.

1966: A plan to merge Youngstown Foundry & Machine Co. into Wean Industries Inc. of Warren is announced by R.J. Wean Jr., president of Wean.

A new law requires every municipality to transfer its police and fire pension funds to the state by Jan. 1, but Youngstown will not surrender its funds until all avenues to circumvent the law have been explored.

Legislation to create the position of telephone operator in the Youngstown sanitation department is promised by Mayor Anthony Flask to address numerous complaints about rude answers to people calling the department.

1941: Campaign Chairman Harry Rownd says $15,839 has been subscribed in advance of the actual launching of the Mahoning County campaign to raise $170,000 for the American Red Cross.

Cleveland building corporation plans a $2 million project to build 400 homes on a 127-acre tract in Girard near the Mahoning Country Club.

Mayor-elect Andrew Hamrock of Campbell appoints Michael Szenborn as safety-service director and Joseph “Huck” Jumbar as street commissioner. They succeed Joh Hassay and Walter Muzevich Jr.