YEARS AGO

Today is Sunday, Jan. 1, the first day of 2017. There are 364 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1863: President Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that slaves in rebel states shall be “forever free.”

1913: The U.S. Parcel Post system goes into operation.

1935: The Associated Press inaugurates Wirephoto, the first successful service for transmitting photographs by wire to member newspapers.

1942: Twenty-six countries, including the United States, sign the Declaration of the United Nations, pledging “not to make a separate armistice or peace” with members of the Axis.

The Rose Bowl is played in Durham, N.C., because of security concerns in the wake of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor; Oregon State defeated Duke, 20-16.

1945: France is admitted to the United Nations.

1953: Country singer Hank Williams Sr., 29, is discovered dead in the back seat of his car during a stop in Oak Hill, W. Va., while he was being driven to a concert date in Canton, Ohio.

1959: Fidel Castro and his revolutionaries overthrow Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista, who fled to the Dominican Republic.

1975: A jury in Washington finds Nixon administration officials John N. Mitchell, H.R. Haldeman, John D. Ehrlichman and Robert C. Mardian guilty of charges related to the Watergate cover-up (Mardian’s conviction for conspiracy was later overturned on appeal).

1979: The United States and China hold celebrations in Washington and Beijing to mark the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

1984: The breakup of AT&T takes place as the telecommunications giant is divested of its 22 Bell System companies under terms of an antitrust agreement.

1992: Boutros Boutros-Ghali succeeds Javier Perez de Cuellar as the secretary-general of the United Nations.

1994: The North American Free Trade Agreement goes into effect.

2007: President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush join thousands of other mourners in paying respects to former President Gerald R. Ford.

An Indonesian Boeing 737 jetliner crashes, killing all 102 people on board.

Ban Ki-moon becomes the eighth U.N. secretary-general.

Grand Ole Opry star Del Reeves dies at age 74.

Denver Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams, 24, is slain in a drive-by shooting (gang member Willie Clark was later convicted of killing Williams and was sentenced to life in prison).

The ninth-ranked Boise State Broncos complete a perfect season with a 43-42 overtime victory over No. 7 Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl. No. 8 Southern California beat No. 3 Michigan 32-18 in the Rose Bowl.

2012: A Mount Rainier National Park ranger, Margaret Anderson, is shot and killed by the driver of a car that blew through a checkpoint. (Searchers later found the body of the gunman, 24-year-old Benjamin Colton Barnes, in a snowy creek; an autopsy showed he had died of drowning with hypothermia as a factor.)

2014: The nation’s first legal recreational pot shops open in Colorado at 8 a.m. Mountain time.

2016: Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign says it has raised $37 million in the previous three months and more than $112 million in all of 2015 to support her bid for the Democratic nomination.

VINDICATOR FILES

1992: Gov. George Voinovich’s budget cuts will hit Youngstown State University hard, bringing a hiring freeze, 5 percent cuts in all department budgets and a reduction in course offerings.

Gov. Voinovich says the state will offer incentives to General Motors Corp. to expand its truck plant in the Dayton suburb of Moraine.

Students in the Youngs-town State University Speech, Communication and Theater Department will re-enact the Lincoln-Douglas debate Jan. 12 at the Butler Institute of American Art.

1977: Traffic accidents claimed the lives of 37 people in Mahoning County during 1976 – 12 in accidents in the city and 25 on county highways, which is nine fewer than in 1975.

The Rev. Eugene Trainer, former coordinator of religious education in De Kalb, Ill., is appointed to the 20-man staff of the Missionary of the Sacred Heart in Youngstown.

Youngsters are skating from daylight till midnight during the holidays at a new ice skating rink in Liberty Park in North Jackson.

1967: Trumbull County gets through the waning hours of 1966 without a traffic fatality, but the year goes down as the second deadliest in Trumbull’s motoring history. The number of traffic fatalities was 61, two less than the 1937 record.

All Struthers policemen, firemen and sewage workers who have been “sick” return to work, while all Campbell policemen except lieutenants still have the “blue flu.”

Dr. Gene Mannella, former Niles resident, is appointed to do major space research at the NASA Electronics Research Center in Cambridge, Mass. He received his doctorate in chemical engineering from Rensselear Polytechnic Institute.

1942: Youngstown’s unofficial vice squad, Jerry Pascarella and his brother, Wally, are in city jail after invading Poland and escaping bullets from the gun of an irate Poland druggist, Kenneth Barnes, whose small slot machine the Pascarellas snatched from the sore counter.

A check for $6,024 covering loss of food stamps and cash in the May burglary at the county food stamp office in the Mart Building is turned over to county officials by the U.S. Fidelity & Guaranty Co.

The Youngstown Commodity Distribution Committee announces that the county is allocated 148 new tires for passenger cars, motorcycles and light trucks and 323 new tires for trucks and buses in January.