YEARS AGO FOR DEC. 8

Today is Saturday, Dec. 8, the 342nd day of 2018. There are 23 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1813: Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92, is first performed in Vienna, with Beethoven himself conducting.

1886: The American Federation of Labor is founded in Columbus, Ohio.

1941: The United States enters World War II as Congress declares war against Imperial Japan, a day after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

1980: Rock star and former Beatle John Lennon is shot to death outside his New York City apartment building by an apparently deranged fan.

1987: President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev sign a treaty at the White House calling for destruction of intermediate-range nuclear missiles.

2017: At a campaign rally in the Florida panhandle, near the Alabama border, President Donald Trump urges Alabama voters to elect Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, who had been dogged by allegations of sexual misconduct.

VINDICATOFR FILES

1993: Youngstown Board of Education President Anthony Julian and board member Don L. Hanni III get into a screaming match over the evaluation of Superintendent Alfred Tutela. Hanni accuses Julian of putting together a composite evaluation that was more critical than it should have been.

A new contract for Packard Electric workers includes provisions to hire up to 300 workers at lower rates of pay. The International Union of Electrical Workers represents 7,400 employees at Packard plants in Warren and Cortland.

Mahoning County facilities manager Govind Thakkar says he has found that 71 of the county’s 850 telephone lines haven’t been used for as long as five years, but the county has been paying about $14,000 annually for the unused lines.

1978: Some 11,500 Mahoning County families – 26,800 individuals – on the federal food stamp program will receive a 5.5 percent cost-of-living increase.

Ronald E. Towns Jr., who has 30 years of steel experience at Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., is named general manager of the Jones & Laughlin-Youngstown Sheet & Tube combined tubular products by R. Gordon Allen, president of J&L’s central district.

Mahoning County Juvenile Court Judge Martin P. Joyce orders a 17-year-old Newton Falls boy to undergo mental tests at the Ohio Youth Commission in Columbus before deciding how to proceed on two homicide charges in the deaths of a husband and wife during a robbery at a Milton Township service station.

1968: A giant C-54 aircraft arrives in Youngstown bringing Pfc. Terrance Gray, 21, of Ford Avenue home on convalescent leave. Gray was smiling, despite being in a full body cast while convalescing from wounds suffered in Vietnam.

Sears Roebuck & Co. issues an urgent recall for jewelry decorated with beads that can cause death. Local stores say they returned the jewelry shipments without selling any.

A 70-foot-high Christmas tree built of live greens attached to an aluminum frame is erected by crane on the side of the Kilcawley Student Union at Youngstown State University.

1943: The United States is on the verge of the greatest era of prosperity in history ending worries of mass unemployment if management, labor, agriculture and government can cooperate, Eric A. Johnston, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, tells a crowd of 900 at the Hotel Pick-Ohio. Frank Purnell, president of the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., is honored for his service to the Mahoning Valley.

The Ohio Supreme Court rules Drs. Edward Reilly, Campbell, and Charles Scofield, Struthers, both health commissioners, are entitled to their positions under civil-service laws.