Saturday, December 22, 2018
Today is Saturday, Dec. 22, the 356th day of 2018. There are nine days left in the year.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
1937: The first, center tube of the Lincoln Tunnel connecting New York City and New Jersey beneath the Hudson River is opened to traffic. (The second tube opens in 1945, the third in 1957.
1944: During the World War II Battle of the Bulge, U.S. Brig. Gen. Anthony C. McAuliffe rejects a German demand for surrender, writing “Nuts!” in his official reply.
1977: Three dozen people are killed when a 250-foot-high grain elevator at the Continental Grain Company plant in Westwego, La., explodes.
1984: New York City resident Bernhard Goetz shoots and wounds four youths on a Manhattan subway, claiming they were about to rob him.
2010: President Barack Obama signs a law allowing gays for the first time in history to serve openly in America’s military, repealing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
VINDICATOR FILES
1993: Four children and their grandfather die in a fire at 151 Glenaven Avenue on Youngstown’s South Side and five other residents are hospitalized with injuries. Dead are Wardele Neely, 70; Ebony Neely, 7; Stacey Neely, 6; Raven Neely, 2, and Jonathan Smith, 4.
Angeline Frank, East Liverpool’s auditor, is elected by the Columbiana County Democratic Party’s central committee to serve out the term of Columbiana County Treasurer Ardel Strabala.
Burdman Bros. Inc. agrees to give the Wick Building and a parking lot off Commerce Street downtown to the city of Youngstown. Acting finance director David Bozanich says the city will solicit redevelopment proposals from private businesses.
1978: A 24-year-old derrick hand, John Kesseg of Damascus, is killed when an oil and gas drilling rig collapses on Western Reserve Road at the Ellsworth-Green border. It is the second fatal drilling accident in Mahoning County since 1976. Three men have died in Trumbull County.
Fourteen police and street department employees in Lowellville are back at their posts after a 12-hour strike. They returned to work under the threat of suspension by Mayor Alfred Russo.
Judge Robert Kalafut of Struthers is named president of the Eastern Mahoning County Mental Health Center.
1968: Clyde Wells, a member of the Trumbull County Sheriff’s mounted posse, finds the body of a Warren women while looking for a Christmas tree in a Braceville Township field. Mary Pringle, 20, was last seen a day earlier after cashing her paycheck at the Union Savings and Trust Co.
The families of eight district reservists killed eight days ago when a C-119 from the Youngstown air base flew into a mountain in Puerto Rico are waiting for the bodies to be brought back to Youngstown.
Cmdr. Edwin A. Everett of Warren is appointed commanding officer of the U.S. Naval Reserve’s Military Sea Transportation Service.
1943: Capt. Warner Marshall Jr., 37, a descendant of Mahoning Valley pioneers, is reported killed in a plane crash in India. A graduate of Yale and member of a Wall Street law firm, he been at the Quebec, Cairo and Teheran conferences and was doing intelligence work.
Janice Graham, 20-year-old hired girl on the Everett Wilson farm near Mercer, Pa., will be charged with slaying Mrs. Catherine Wilson and Robert McKay. William Morrell was found guilty in the murder of Helen Wilson, Catherine’s daughter.
George Rigas and George Chukas, two of three men believed to oversee the “Big House,” Youngstown’s largest lottery operation, turn themselves in to face 23 gambling counts returned by a special grand jury. The third man, George Limberty, formerly Limberopoulos, was arrested a week earlier.