YEARS AGO FOR DECEMBER 16

Today is Saturday, Dec. 16, the 350th day of 2017. There are 15 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1944: The World War II Battle of the Bulge begins as German forces launch a surprise attack against Allied forces through the Ardennes Forest in Belgium and Luxembourg. The Allies were eventually able to turn the Germans back.

1950: President Harry S. Truman proclaims a national state of emergency to fight “world conquest by Communist imperialism.”

1985: At services in Fort Campbell, Ky., President Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy, offer condolences to families of 248 soldiers killed in the crash of a chartered plane in Newfoundland.

2007: Singer-songwriter Dan Fogelberg died in Deer Isle, Maine, at age 56.

2016: John Glenn’s home state and the nation began saying goodbye to the beloved astronaut starting with a public viewing of his flag-draped coffin inside Ohio’s Statehouse rotunda in Columbus.

VINDICATOR FILES

1992: Youngstown Schools Superintendent Alfred Tutela shocks the board of education by recommending that the district no longer pay the $40,000 salary of John Senzarin, president of the teachers union, because he is a full-time union official with no teaching duties. Senzarin’s nonteaching status was negotiated in 1990 before Tutela arrived.

Joey Hess, 8-year-old second-grader at Champion Central School, receives a Governor’s Award in recognition of his bravery and quick thinking in saving his mother from serious injury when her shirt caught fire in November.

The $902-million capital-improvements budget being considered in Columbus would provide $13 million for the Mahoning Valley, of which $11.2 million would go to Youngstown State University.

1977: The Mahoning Steel Co. is formed with William J. Sullivan as its agent in an effort to reopen the Campbell Works of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., restoring 2,000 jobs within nine months and showing a profit within six years.

The staffs of the Eastgate Development and Transportation Agency and the Western Reserve Economic Development Agency are warned by their boards of directors that they must resolve their differences before the turf battle they’re pursuing costs the Mahoning Valley federal funds.

Ross Browner, All-American defensive end from Notre Dame who starred at Warren Western Reserve High School, receives the Maxwell Club award for 1977, given to the best all-around college football player in the nation.

1967: Eight people are known dead and 33 are missing after the Silver Bridge over the Ohio River near Gallipolis collapses. An estimated 75 cars were on the bridge when three sections of the bridge gave way.

A jury of five men and seven women acquit Michael Senich, former Courthouse custodian, of manslaughter in the death of his ex-wife, Betty, whom he was accused of running over with his car outside the 279 Lounge on Mahoning Avenue.

Directors of United Engineering and Foundry Co. approve “in principle” a merger with Wean Industries of Warren.

1942: Permission to build a trap door in the floor of the Center Street Bridge is granted to Republic Steel Corp. It will be used to drop ready-mixed concrete into cars on the tracks below to facilitate operations.

Lt. Col. Melvin McCreary of Youngstown is singled out for “excellent mortar work” in the capture of Buna.