Years Ago

Today is Wednesday, Jan. 6, the sixth day of 2016. There are 360 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1540: England’s King Henry VIII marries his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. (The marriage lasted about six months.)

1759: George Washington and Martha Dandridge Custis are married in New Kent County, Va.

1838: Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail give the first successful public demonstration of their telegraph in Morristown, N.J.

1912: New Mexico becomes the 47th state.

1919: The 26th president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, dies in Oyster Bay, N.Y., at age 60.

1941: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his State of the Union address, outlines a goal of “Four Freedoms”: Freedom of speech and expression, the freedom of people to worship God in their own way, freedom from want and freedom from fear.

1945: George Herbert Walker Bush marries Barbara Pierce at First Presbyterian Church in Rye, N.Y.

1950: Britain recognizes the Communist government of China.

1963: “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” premieres on NBC-TV.

1974: Year-round daylight saving time begins in the U.S. on a trial basis as a fuel-saving measure in response to the OPEC oil embargo.

1994: Figure skater Nancy Kerrigan is clubbed on the leg by an assailant at Detroit’s Cobo Arena. (Four men, including the ex-husband of Kerrigan’s rival, Tonya Harding, went to prison for their roles in the attack.)

2001: With Vice President Al Gore presiding (in his capacity as president of the Senate), Congress formally certifies George W. Bush the winner of the bitterly contested 2000 presidential election.

2006: Al-Qaida’s No. 2 official, Ayman al-Zawahri, says in a videotape that a recent U.S. decision to withdraw some troops from Iraq represented “the victory of Islam.”

2015: In a blend of pageantry and politics, Republicans take complete control of Congress for the first time in eight years, then run straight into a White House veto threat against their top-priority legislation to build the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

VINDICATOR FILES

1991: Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins, president of the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association, has been interviewed by The New York Times and NBC’s “Today” show criticizing Ohio Gov. Richard F. Celeste’s pardoning of 25 women who claim abuse by the men in their lives forced them to resort to violence.

Jack Hanna, director of the Columbus Zoo, is in Youngstown to kick off the Mill Creek Metropolitan Park District’s Centennial Celebration.

The former Strouss department store building in downtown New Castle, Pa., once the hub of the downtown commercial district, is being auctioned with bidding on the two-story building starting at $5,000.

1976: Four of the 13 Youngstown policemen charged in connection with a burglary ring in 1973 have their criminal records expunged by Common Pleas Judge Charles J. Bannon.

George Vukovich, unsuccessful Democratic challenger to Youngstown Mayor Jack Hunter, in November, is named Youngstown’s new city clerk by the unanimous vote of the Democratic city council.

A fire of undetermined origin halts production at the van assembly line at General Motors Corp.’s Lordstown plant.

1966: A proposed Lake Erie-Ohio River Waterway has its strongest support in its long history, Atty. Kenneth M. Lloyd says during a speech to the Automobile Dealers Association of Eastern Ohio.

Plans to establish homes for the care, residence, maintenance and teaching of dependent, neglected or delinquent children are revealed with the incorporation of Steel Valley Homes for Youth Inc. of Youngstown.

A group touring the Mahoning Valley Vocational School at the Youngstown Air Base is told that 2,000 youths have graduated, and 78 percent of the graduates have jobs.

1941: Howling winds sweep through the Youngstown area, sending temperatures plummeting to 11 degrees in the city and 8 in Canfield.

Randolph K. Fusselman and Harry E. Fusselman Jr., sons of Dr. and Mrs. Harry E. Fusselman, Market Street, leave for Virginia to resume studies at Staunton Military Academy.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt tells Congress that the U.S. faces unprecedented foreign peril and demands “a swift and driving increase in our armaments” to provide for defense at home and to aid democracies abroad.