YEARS AGO FOR DECEMBER 12

Today is Tuesday, Dec. 12, the 346th day of 2017. There are 19 days left in the year. Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, begins at sunset.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1787: Pennsylvania becomes the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

1897: “The Katzenjammer Kids,” the pioneering comic strip created by Rudolph Dirks, debuts in the New York Journal.

1906: President Theodore Roosevelt nominates Oscar Straus for secretary of Commerce and Labor; he becomes the first Jewish Cabinet member.

1917: During World War I, a train carrying some 1,000 French troops from the Italian front derails while descending a steep hill in Modane; at least half of the soldiers are killed in France’s greatest rail disaster.

1925: The first motel – the Motel Inn – opens in San Luis Obispo, Calif.

1977: The dance movie “Saturday Night Fever,” a Paramount Pictures release starring John Travolta, premieres in New York.

2000: George W. Bush becomes president-elect as a divided U.S. Supreme Court reverses a state court decision for recounts in Florida’s contested election.

2007: Ike Turner, rock pioneer and ex-husband of Tina Turner, dies in San Marcos, Calif., at 76.

2012: North Koreans dance in the streets of their capital, Pyongyang, after the regime of Kim Jong Un succeeds in firing a long-range rocket in defiance of international warnings.

VINDICATOR FILES

1992: The 7th District Court of Appeals rules that WTI protesters who were sentenced to jail by Columbiana County Common Pleas Judge Douglas Jenkins will avoid jail time if they pay fines of $250 each within three days.

The U.S. Big Three automakers – GM, Ford and Chrysler – will study whether to share research that could speed development of a commercially viable electric vehicle.

Charles Lewis who runs an auto and truck body shop in Stoneboro, Pa., presents petitions with 600 signatures to the Lakeview [Pa.] Board of Education seeking reductions of $2,400 in teacher salaries in each of the next two years. Lewis says teachers in the district who are paid between $28,788 and $41,000 a year are overpaid.

1977: Susan L. Barrow, home for the holidays from Twin Wells Indian School in Sun Valley, Ariz., will discuss her experiences teaching fifth grade and Bible to Navajo children at a meeting of the Columbiana Community Christian Women.

Lee Tressel of Baldwin-Wallace edges Miami’s Dick Crum for 1977 Ohio College Football Coach of the year by the narrowest margin in the 26-year history of the balloting conducted by the Columbus Dispatch.

Economists from Washington and religious leaders from Youngstown unveil an ambitious scheme to operate the Campbell Works of Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. under employee-ownership.

1967: A 45-year-old Youngstown man is arrested with more than a dozen credit cards in his possession after he tried to use one of them to buy a dress at the downtown McKelvey’s store.

A United Airlines Turboprop carrying 15 passengers, including three bound for Youngstown, skidded off a runway at Akron-Canton Airport, injuring six.

Youngstown safety forces remain $936 a year behind the average annual salary paid police and firemen in Ohio’s 10 major cities.

1942: Ohio will renew license plates by issuing windshield stickers rather than new metal plates.

Officials at Firestone Park in Columbiana ask police and area residents to be on the lookout for two missing swans.

General Fireproofing Co. employees contributed more than $6,000 to the Youngstown and Mahoning County Community and War Chest drive.