YEARS AGO FOR DEC. 14

Today is Friday, Dec. 14, the 348th day of 2018. There are 17 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1799: The first president of the United States, George Washington, dies at his Mount Vernon, Va., home at age 67.

1819: Alabama joins the Union as the 22nd state.

1916: President Woodrow Wilson vetoes an immigration measure aimed at preventing “undesirables” and anyone born in the “Asiatic Barred Zone” from entering the U.S. (Congress overrode Wilson’s veto in February 1917.)

1964: The U.S. Supreme Court, in Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, rules that Congress was within its authority to enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1964 against racial discrimination by private businesses (in this case, a motel that refused to cater to blacks).

1988: President Ronald Reagan authorizes the U.S. to enter into a “substantive dialogue” with the Palestine Liberation Organization, after chairman Yasser Arafat said he is renouncing “all forms of terrorism.”

2005: President George W. Bush defends his decision to wage the Iraq war, even as he acknowledges that “much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong.”

2008: An Iraqi journalist hurls his shoes at President George W. Bush during a news conference in Baghdad; Bush ducks.

2012: A gunman with a semi-automatic rifle kills 20 first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. He then commits suicide as police arrive.

VINDICATOR FILES

1993: The Vindicator files a lawsuit seeking access to the paperwork Youngstown Board of Education members completed in evaluating Superintendent Alfred Tutela.

U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. begins efforts to win a second federal office building and courthouse for downtown Youngstown.

Twenty men and women from 13 countries help open the new federal building and courthouse in Youngstown by taking the oath of citizenship.

1978: Two CB-radio fast talkers tracked a Nebraska truck driver to an Austintown truck stop where they shot him, took his truck and its load of beef valued at $60,000. Michael R. Izzo, 24, of Omaha was dumped in a ditch in Mercer County, Pa., but got to a nearby farmhouse for help. He is in serious condition in North Side Hospital.

Boardman schools close for Christmas vacation six days early because the school district is out of money for the year.

Three armed robbers hold up a bingo game at the Patagonia Fire Station in Hermitage, Pa. After a half-mile police chase during which shots were fired, one suspect is arrested.

1968: The Youngstown Hospital Association increases its room rates by $7 per day to cover the cost of recent pay increases. Semi-private rooms will be $46 and private rooms, $53.

A delegation of women jurors seeking an increase in the $5 juror’s fee is rebuffed by Thomas Barrett, chairman of the Mahoning County commissioners. By law, the commissioners can authorize payment up to $10 a day.

Three employees of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. are injured, one seriously, in an electrical explosion at the Campbell Works blooming mill. Joseph Morrison, 61, is in serious condition at South Side Hospital; Robert Brinks, 35, is in fair condition and Donald Ablett, 42, was treated and released.

1943: Six civic leaders in Youngstown and Mahoning County are named to a newly created welfare advisory board: Judge Henry Beckenbach, Ambrose J. Wardle, Mr. John Ford, Bert Millikin, Mrs. Fred James and Joseph Beller.

Hundreds of Columbiana County workers are idle after extreme cold causes a shortage of natural gas.

Mr. and Mrs. Bert Boz of Youngstown receive a special Christmas present in the form of a card from their son, Seaman 1st Class Wallace Boz, reported missing in March 1942 in the Battle of the Java Sea.