YEARS AGO

Today is Thursday, Jan. 12, the 12th day of 2017. There are 353 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1773: The first public museum in America is organized in Charleston, S.C.

1910: At a White House dinner hosted by President William Howard Taft, Baroness Rosen, wife of the Russian ambassador, causes a stir by requesting and smoking a cigarette – it was, apparently, the first time a woman had smoked openly during a public function in the executive mansion. (Some of the other women present who had brought their own cigarettes began lighting up in turn.)

1915: The U.S. House of Representatives rejects, 204-174, a proposed constitutional amendment to give women nationwide the right to vote.

1932: Hattie W. Caraway becomes the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate.

1966: The TV series “Batman,” starring Adam West and Burt Ward as the Dynamic Duo, premieres on ABC, airing twice a week on consecutive nights.

1971: The groundbreaking situation comedy “All in the Family” premieres on CBS television.

1976: Mystery writer Dame Agatha Christie dies in Wallingford, England, at age 85.

2012: Pentagon leaders scramble to contain damage from an Internet video purporting to show four Marines urinating on Taliban corpses.

VINDICATOR FILES

1992: U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr., D-Poland, who has been espousing a theory that a CIA plot led to the downing of Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland, says he will delve into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, inspired by Oliver Stone’s box office hit “JFK.”

Niles McKinley High School, which has been playing home games on Saturday nights stretching back to the coaching days of Tony Mason, will abandon the 30-year tradition, switching to Friday games in the 1992-93 season.

Nationally syndicated columnist Erma Bombeck includes in her Sunday column poems and other thoughts written by an Austintown 15-year-old, Laura Jo Mounsey, who is battling cancer.

1977: Howland police are asked to attend a meeting of the Howland Board of Education after Superintendent Dr. Tom Powers says he and board members have received threats against their safety during a 10-day teachers’ strike.

While the air most Pennsylvanians breathe is cleaner than four years ago, the state Department of Environmental Resources reports that the air many western Pennsylvanians breathe is more polluted.

GF Business Equipment of Youngstown signs a contract to buy a 400,000-square-foot production complex in Galatin, Tenn., from Globe Business Furniture Inc. for $6 million.

1967: An out-of-control Army truck in Route 18 near New Castle crushes a car carrying workers to Westinghouse’s Sharon Plant, killing David L. Patton, 20; James Tuscanno, 36, and Harry Jones, 45, all of New Castle. Four others are injured.

The 1967 Youngstown budget of $16.7 million is adopted by city council, but not before a request was made by Fifth Ward Councilman Jack Hunter for an increase in the city income tax to cover capital improvements.

An intruder armed with a big club is surprised in the home of Atty. Nathaniel Jones on Alameda Avenue by Mrs. Jones, who was returning home at 9 a.m. The man fled when Mrs. Jones ran to a neighbor’s to call police.

1942: Youngstown motorists who carry liability insurance will see a rate reduction, while most other insured motorists will see increases.

John Fill, a ship’s cook burned in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, returns to Youngstown to recuperate, the first area casualty of World War II to come home.

Robert Stewart, Poland Presbyterian Church, and Betty Wright, East Palestine, win district gold medal awards in the Prince of Peace contest.