YEARS AGO FOR DECEMBER 15

Today is Friday, Dec. 15, the 349th day of 2017. There are 16 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1791: The Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, takes effect after ratification by Virginia.

1890: Sioux Indian Chief Sitting Bull and 11 other tribe members are killed in Grand River, S.D., during a confrontation with Indian police.

1938: Groundbreaking for the Jefferson Memorial takes place in Washington, D.C., with President Franklin D. Roosevelt taking part in the ceremony.

1939: The Civil War motion picture epic “Gone with the Wind,” starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, has its world premiere in Atlanta.

1944: A single-engine plane carrying bandleader Glenn Miller, a major in the U.S. Army Air Forces, disappears over the English Channel while en route to Paris.

1967: The Silver Bridge between Gallipolis, Ohio, and Point Pleasant, W.Va., collapses into the Ohio River, killing 46 people.

1978: President Jimmy Carter announces he will grant diplomatic recognition to Communist China on New Year’s Day and sever official ties with Taiwan.

2016: A federal jury in Charleston, S.C., convicts Dylann Roof of slaughtering nine black church members who had welcomed him to their Bible study.

VINDICATOR FILES

1992: Mahoning Valley political leaders agree to approve an interim financial package to raise an estimated $7 million needed to attract a Pentagon accounting and finance center to the area.

A Mahoning County Common Pleas jury deliberates for just 11/2 hours before convicting Stephen Burroughs of aggravated robbery of Husam Halaweh at his Quick Pick Deli and Food Mart on Market Street.

Sixteen people go to jail rather than pay $250 fines for protesting at the site of Waste Technologies Industries in East Liverpool.

1977: A gunman hiding outside the Girard office of Dr. Leo DiBlasio opens fire, killing the doctor’s wife, Patricia, 40, and seriously wounding receptionist Mary Muffley and the doctor.

Army Spec. 4 Ron Achenbach of Sharon, Pa., serves as a sentinel at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery.

City Council orders the Youngstown Street Department to keep a street-by-street map documenting the clearance of snow after complaints of haphazard work after a 6-inch snowfall.

1967: William H. Farragher Jr., advertising manager of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., is named chairman of trustees of the Marketing Communications Research Center of Princeton, N.J.

The Ohio Board of Regents approves six master’s degree programs for Youngstown State University, an essential step in beginning a graduate program by fall 1968.

John Denno, 17, argues with deputy sheriffs and others to resume a search for two friends, Michel Sanfrey and Harry Reibold, lost in an abandoned clay mine near Wellsville. After Denno convinced authorities that the disappearance was not a hoax, a fourth search was launched and both young men were found.

1942: The American Hungarian Federation donates a new ambulance to the Mahoning County Chapter of the American Red Cross. It is the 12th vehicle donated by Hungarian Americans to Red Cross chapters in the county.

More than 1,000 people crowd Youngstown’s five ration boards to beat the deadline to register for War Ration Book No. 1.

Postal officials hope a large amount of Christmas mail will be diverted to the South Side annex.