YEARS AGO FOR DECEMBER 11

Today is Monday, Dec. 11, the 345th day of 2017. There are 20 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1602: Forces sent by the Duke of Savoy attempt to seize the walled city-state of Geneva by scaling the wall with ladders; however, the Genevans are able to repel the invaders.

1792: France’s King Louis XVI goes before the Convention to face charges of treason. (Louis was convicted, and executed the following month.)

1816: Indiana becomes the 19th state.

1917: British Gen. Edmund Allenby enters Jerusalem two days after his forces expelled the Ottoman Turks; in a show of respect, Allenby and his officers make their way into the Holy City on foot.

1936: Britain’s King Edward VIII abdicates the throne so he could marry American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson; his brother, Prince Albert, becomes King George VI.

1941: Germany and Italy declare war on the United States; the U.S. responds in kind.

1957: The movie “Peyton Place,” based on the novel by Grace Metalious, has its world premiere in Camden, Maine, where most of it was filmed.

1972: Apollo 17’s lunar module lands on the moon with astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt aboard; they become the last two men to date to step onto the lunar surface.

2016: President-elect Donald Trump calls a recent CIA assessment of Russian hacking in the U.S. election “ridiculous.”

VINDICATOR FILES

1992: Supporters of the Waste Technologies Industries hazardous waste incinerator at East Liverpool say they plan to be more active in response to Vice President Al Gore’s criticism of the project. Marylin Parkes, a teacher, says Gore s “trying to close down our future.”

Four U.S. Department of Defense officials inspect the Mahoning Valley’s two proposed sites for a Pentagon finance center.

Clerks at the Youngstown State University bookstore can barely keep up with the demand for Penguin gear as the YSU football team prepares to meet Northern Iowa in a semifinal for the NCAA Division 1-AA championship.

1977: Jennie H. Dennison, director of the Trumbull County Office of Elderly Affairs, says, “We talk of old age as being the ‘Golden Years’ the second you turn 60. There is no more vicious lie that I can think of.”

United Airlines is discontinuing first-class service on its 737 jetliners, a move with considerable consequences for air travelers who use Youngstown Municipal Airport.

Atty. James “Ted” Roberts is named chairman of the March of Dimes Youngstown Mothers March against birth defects that will take place in January.

1967: Pfc. Paul E. Dufford, 19, of Sharon, Pa., is reported killed in Vietnam when his division was attacked about 50 miles north of Saigon.

Pictures of orphan puppies at the Mahoning County Dog Pound in Sunday’s Vindicator lead to the adoption of 26 puppies and two cats.

FBI statistics show Youngstown crime increased 51 percent for the first nine months of 1967, compared with the same period in 1966, driven by a dramatic increase in homicides, from four to 14.

1942: Frank Sinkwich and George Poschner, Youngstown stars on the University of Georgia football team, purchase the first two bangle pins in the Youngstown Junior Chamber of Commerce “Mile of Dimes” campaign.

President Franklin Roosevelt informs Congress that by the end of the month, American forces overseas will number 1 million.

The deadline is approaching for motorists to turn in all extra tires and place gasoline rationing stickers in windshields. Cars without rationing stickers can be ordered off the road.