YEARS AGO

Today is Wednesday, Jan. 11, the 11th day of 2017. There are 354 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1861: Alabama becomes the fourth state to withdraw from the Union.

1913: The first enclosed sedan-type automobile, a Hudson, goes on display at the 13th National Automobile Show in New York.

1927: The creation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is proposed at a dinner of Hollywood luminaries at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

1935: Aviator Amelia Earhart begins an 18-hour trip from Honolulu to Oakland, Calif., that makes her the first person to fly solo across any part of the Pacific Ocean.

1964: U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry issues “Smoking and Health,” a report that concludes that “cigarette smoking contributes substantially to mortality from certain specific diseases and to the overall death rate.”

1977: France sets off an international uproar by releasing Abu Daoud, a PLO official behind the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

1989: Nine days before leaving the White House, President Ronald Reagan bids the nation farewell in a prime-time address, saying of his eight years in office: “We meant to change a nation, and instead, we changed a world.”

2003: Calling the death-penalty process “arbitrary and capricious, and therefore immoral,” Illinois Gov. George Ryan commutes the sentences of 167 condemned inmates, clearing his state’s death row two days before leaving office.

2016: Gunmen storm into a mall in Baghdad, Iraq, killing 18 people; the Islamic State group claims responsibility.

VINDICATOR FILES

1992: An abundant supply and sluggish demand for gasoline push prices in the Mahoning Valley below $1 per gallon.

State Sen. Harry Meshel, D-33rd, asks Gov. George Voinovich to decentralize some state agencies and move operations from Columbus to the Mahoning Valley.

Ronald Pierce, 18, of East Boston Avenue, sobs after a Mahoning County jury finds him not guilty in the murder of Jeremy Lockard, 20, of Pittsburgh, and then joins family and friends outside the courthouse to jump up and down in celebration. He had been held for eight months awaiting trial.

1977: The Columbiana Board of Education votes to keep schools closed through the week and every Monday in February due to a shortage of natural gas caused by unusually cold weather.

Twenty-one Boardman Township road department employees go on strike, demanding recognition of the Ohio Public Employees Union, headed by Don Hanni III, as their bargaining agent.

1967: Dr. Joseph E. Smith, dean of Youngstown University and a member of the YSU faculty since 1921, will retire at the end of the 1966-67 academic year.

E. Ray Davis is the newly elected chairman of the Austintown Township Board of Trustees, succeeding Emil Bertolini Jr.

The Beaver Local school board approves hiring Acme Visible Records Inc. to provide data-processing equipment to handle student scheduling, grades and attendance at the schools.

1942: U.S. Sen Harold Burton of Cleveland, who aided in getting authorization for the $6.6 million Berlin Reservoir, is invited to participate in the groundbreaking ceremony.

Atty. Mark E. Moore, mayor of Youngstown from 1931 to 1935 – the worst years of the Depression – dies in St. Elizabeth Hospital.

The councilmanic ax falls hard on the proposed 1942 expenditures during a six-hour session that saw $20,000 cut from first-quarter requests of various Youngstown departments.