YEARS AGO FOR DEC. 31

Today is Sunday, Dec. 31, the 365th and final day of 2017.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1775: During the Revolutionary War, the British repulse an attack by Continental Army generals Richard Montgomery and Benedict Arnold at Quebec; Montgomery was killed.

1879: Thomas Edison first publicly demonstrates his electric incandescent light by illuminating some 40 bulbs at his laboratory in Menlo Park, N.J.

1904: New York’s Times Square sees its first New Year’s Eve celebration, with an estimated 200,000 people in attendance.

1946: President Harry S. Truman officially proclaims the end of hostilities in World War II.

1972: Major League baseball player Roberto Clemente, 38, is killed when a plane he chartered and was traveling on to bring relief supplies to earthquake-devastated Nicaragua crashes shortly after takeoff from Puerto Rico.

1985: Singer Rick Nelson, 45, and six other people are killed when fire breaks out aboard a DC-3 plane that was taking the group to a New Year’s Eve performance in Dallas.

1986: Ninety-seven people are killed when fire breaks out in the Dupont Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico. (Three hotel workers later pleaded guilty in connection with the blaze.)

VINDICATOR FILES

1992: U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. announces that a long-running $11.6 million dispute between Bucheit International of Boardman and a member of Saudi Arabia’s royal family has been settled.

Warren police charge a 17-year-old and are looking for a 23-year-old in the shooting death of Joseph Muscardelli, 21, during a robbery outside Sir Bentley’s bar. A witness noticed a car with the license plate “slumin,” which led to the arrest.

Concerns and legal issues cause officials in Farrell and Sharon, Pa., to shelve plans to merge the city’s fire departments.

1977: YSU geology professor Ann Harris says an old slope mine is the apparent cause of subsiding at the U.S. Naval Reserve Center in Youngstown and the same tunnel may pass under Cardinal Mooney High School.

A federal jury in Miami finds Dominick Bartone, who has Youngstown ties, and a Cleveland insurance salesman, guilty of fraudulently obtaining a bank loan to buy machine guns, but acquits the duo of attempting to smuggle the weapons.

Youngstown Park Director Edward Finamore says some ice fishermen have been spotted on Lake Milton, but he warns that the ice is not thick enough for fishing or skating.

1967: Trumbull County commissioners William Klee and Robert Hagan say they’ve abandoned plans to initiate a $5 local tax on license plates.

Walter E. Mayer, chairman of the department of psychology at Youngstown State University and a former Rayen School teacher, resigns after 20 years to become visiting professor of psychology at the University of Alaska.

A $23 million deal for Medusa Portland Cement Co. to buy Standard Slag Co.’s slag and aggregate properties is called off shortly before the deadline for consummating the sale.

1942: Three factors – a cold wave that turned rain into snow, Berlin Dam holding back 6 billion gallons of water and closed gates at Milton Dam – save the Mahoning Valley from what could have been one of the worst floods in years.

Property owners, proprietors and solicitors connected with houses of prostitution should be arrested and prosecuted, not just the prostitutes, the Mahoning County grand jury writes in a recommendation to Judge John W. Ford.

Youngstown Postmaster John Doyle calls off mail deliveries for one day because of the disruption of train schedules by eastern flood waters.

Judge David Jenkins refuses to terminate the Rayen School trust and distribute the assets to heirs of Judge William Rayen, ending a three-cornered legal battle over the assets.