Today is Sunday, Dec. 23, the 357th day of 2018. There are eight days left in the year.

Today is Sunday, Dec. 23, the 357th day of 2018. There are eight days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1783: George Washington resigns as commander in chief of the Continental Army and retires to his home at Mount Vernon, Va.

1788: Maryland passes an act to cede an area “not exceeding ten miles square” for the seat of the national government; about two-thirds of the area becomes the District of Columbia.

1805: Joseph Smith Jr., principal founder of the Mormon religious movement, is born in Sharon, Vt.

1913: The Federal Reserve System is created as President Woodrow Wilson signs the Federal Reserve Act.

1941: During World War II, American forces on Wake Island surrender to the Japanese.

1948: Former Japanese premier Hideki Tojo and six other Japanese war leaders are executed in Tokyo.

1954: The first successful human kidney transplant takes place at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston as a surgical team removes a kidney from 23-year-old Ronald Herrick and implants it in Herrick’s twin brother, Richard.

1967: President Lyndon B. Johnson, on his way home from a visit to Australia and Southeast Asia, holds an unprecedented meeting with Pope Paul VI at the Vatican; during the two-hour conference, Johnson asks the pope for help in bringing a peaceful end to the Vietnam War.

1968: Eighty-two crew members of the U.S. intelligence ship Pueblo are released by North Korea, 11 months after they had been captured.

1975: Richard S. Welch, the Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Athens, is shot and killed outside his home by the militant group November 17.

1986: The experimental airplane Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, completes the first non-stop, non- refueled round-the-world flight as it returns safely to Edwards Air Force Base in California.

1997: A federal jury in Denver convicts Terry Nichols of involuntary manslaughter and conspiracy for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing, declining to find him guilty of murder. (Nichols is sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.)

2003: The government announces the first suspected (later confirmed) case of mad cow disease in United States, in Washington state.

A jury in Chesapeake, Va., sentences teen sniper Lee Boyd Malvo to life in prison, sparing him the death penalty.

New York Gov. George Pataki posthumously pardons comedian Lenny Bruce for his 1964 obscenity conviction.

2008: Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, founder of an investment fund that had lost $1.4 billion in Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, is discovered dead after committing suicide at his Madison Avenue office.

A military-led group seizes control of the airwaves in Guinea and declares a coup after the death of the country’s long-time dictator, Lansana Conte.

2013: The last two imprisoned members of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot (Maria Alekhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova) are given amnesty and set free after spending nearly two years in prison for a protest at Moscow’s main cathedral.

Auburn’s Gus Malzahn is honored as The Associated Press national coach of the year.

Mikhail Kalashnikov, 94, designer of the AK-47 assault rifle, dies in Izhevsk, Russia.

2017:A federal judge in Seattle partially lifts a Trump administration ban on certain refugees after two groups argued that the policy kept people from some mostly Muslim countries from reuniting with family living legally in the United States.

VINDICATOR FILES

1993: A fifth child dies of injuries sustained in a fire on W. Glenaven Avenue in Youngstown. Lindell Neely, 9, died in Pittsburgh Presbyterian Hospital.

Canfield officials are resolved not to demolish the 83-year-old city mausoleum on East Main Street, but they don’t know where they would find the $150,000 that could be needed to renovate it.

Six members of the Youngstown Board of Education vote to hire Atty. Ted Roberts at $109 an hour to fight a lawsuit filed by The Vindicator seeking their notes on the evaluation of Superintendent Alfred Tutela. They turned to Roberts after Youngstown Law Director Edwin Romero advised them that the notes should be treated as public records.

1978: General Motors retains its place as the Mahoning Valley’s largest and most bountiful company, employing an average of 23,026 workers at Packard Electric and Lordstown and pouring a record $650 million into the Youngstown area economy.

The Ohio Edison Co. plans to spend $6.1 million for new construction in the Youngstown service district, Division Manager David R. Gundry discloses.

The congregation of the Simon Road Church of God purchases a rundown house at 4732 Simon Road and completely renovates it as a parsonage for the new pastor, the Rev. Ellis Smith.

1968: About 20 workers resume production at the Royal China Co.’s No. 1 plant in East Palestine, producing “Currier & Ives” dinnerware. The plant had been idle since 1965.

The bodies of seven of the eight local men killed in the crash of an air reserve plane in Puerto Rico are due to arrive Christmas Eve. They are: Staff Sgt. William Kropp, Sgt. Herschel Clark, Capt. Ivan Bechtel, Sgt. Martin Breckner, Capt. Frank Platenak, Sgt. Harry Murray and Maj. John Balzer.

Three purebred German Shepherd puppies are looking for a Christmas stocking to fill. The dogs belong to Mrs. Beatrice Buddin of Youngstown who will give them away to a good home.

1943: Temperatures dropped to 4 below zero in Canfield overnight as a pre-Christmas cold snap grips the Mahoning Valley.

Sheriff Ralph Elser, angered by the court- ordered release of three racketeers for the Christmas holidays, invites the families of other prisoners to have dinner with their loved ones. They can either bring their own holiday meals to the jail or join the prisoners in eating the meal served at the jail.

Sgt. Chester DelSignore, 26, of Struthers is reported killed in action in Italy.

Seventy-seven boys and girls are guests at the Youngstown Rotary Club’s annual Christmas party at Hotel Pick-Ohio. Children got a bag of gifts, enjoyed Santa Claus, music, and a magician.