YEARS AGO FOR DECEMBER 24

Today is Sunday, Dec. 24, the 358th day of 2017. There are seven days left in the year. This is Christmas Eve.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1814: The United States and Britain sign the Treaty of Ghent, which ends the War of 1812 after ratification by both the British Parliament and the U.S. Senate.

1851: Fire devastates the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., destroying about 35,000 volumes.

1865: Several veterans of the Confederate Army form a private social club in Pulaski, Tenn., that is recognized as the original version of the Ku Klux Klan.

1871: Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Aida” has its world premiere in Cairo, Egypt.

1906: Canadian physicist Reginald A. Fessenden becomes the first person to transmit the human voice (his own) as well as music over radio, from Brant Rock, Mass.

1914: During World War I, impromptu Christmas truces begin to take hold along parts of the Western Front between British and German soldiers.

1939: Pope Pius XII delivers a Christmas Eve address in which he offers a five-point program for peace and denounces “premeditated aggressions.”

1943: President Franklin D. Roosevelt appoints Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe as part of Operation Overlord.

1951: Gian Carlo Menotti’s “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” the first opera written specifically for television, is broadcast by NBC-TV.

1968: The Apollo 8 astronauts, orbiting the moon, read passages from the Old Testament Book of Genesis during a Christmas Eve telecast.

1974: Cyclone Tracy begins battering the Australian city of Darwin, resulting in widespread damage and causing some 65 deaths.

1980: Americans remember the U.S. hostages in Iran by burning candles or shining lights for 417 seconds – one second for each day of captivity.

1995: Fire breaks out at the Philadelphia Zoo, killing 23 rare gorillas, orangutans, gibbons and lemurs.

2007: President George W. Bush makes Christmas Eve calls to 10 U.S. troops serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and other spots around the world, thanking them for their sacrifice and wishing them a happy holiday.

French news cameraman Gwen Le Gouil is released eight days after he had been abducted by Somali gunmen outside the town of Bossaso.

VINDICATOR FILES

1992: Lori Mechling leads five children ranging in age from toddler to early elementary school to safety after discovering a fire in the children’s’ bedroom at an upstairs apartment at 351 Pratt St. in Niles.

Trumbull County Commissioner Arthur Magee says the Western Reserve Port Authority shouldn’t assume that the county will be able to honor a pledge of $120,000 to the airport that was made by Magee’s colleagues.

Injury to eight Youngs-town firefighters leads Fire Chief Hector Colon to announce a crackdown on vacant and derelict homes.

1977: J. Phillip Richley, Democrat mayor-elect, spent $49,000 on his successful campaign, more than his two opponents, Emanuel Catsoules and Ron Daniels, combined.

Portage County deputies identify a woman and a small girl found shot and stabbed to death in a park near Ravenna as Linda Guthier, 30, of Ravenna and daughter, Tonya, 6.

Liberty Township Clerk Russell Banner says the township is going to have to scale back plans for a new township building after the lowest bids come in $135,000 above the $640,000 cost ceiling set by trustees.

1967: Nine people are injured, none seriously, when an estimated 100 cars are involved in 35 accidents during a snow storm on the Ohio Turnpike between Warren and Streetsboro.

New Castle police find Nick Kulik who fell on the pavement near his Moravia Street home and broke his hip. He told officers he waved in vain to passing motorists for a half-hour before police arrived.

Youngstown actress Elizabeth “Biff” Hartman is in Budapest, Hungary, filming Bernard Malamud’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, “The Fixer.”

1942: Youngstown district war workers receive a Christmas message from the soldiers of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who thanked them for the “sinews of war that make victory possible.”

Two-year-old Thomas Tiell dies in a fire at the family home 2 miles east of Columbiana on East Palestine Road. His mother had left the house for a few minutes to deliver gifts to neighbors.

A thief steals the cash box from a crowded Mosier route bus in Youngstown.