YEARS AGO FOR SEPT. 16

Today is Sunday, Sept. 16, the 259th day of 2018. There are 106 days left in the year.

Associated Press

On this date in:

1810: Mexico begins its revolt against Spanish rule.

1857: The song “Jingle Bells” by James Pierpont is copyrighted under its original title, “One Horse Open Sleigh.”

1908: General Motors is founded in Flint, Mich., by William C. Durant.

1919: The American Legion receives a national charter from Congress.

1974: President Gerald R. Ford announces a conditional amnesty program for Vietnam war deserters and draft-evaders.

1982: The massacre of between 1,200 and 1,400 Palestinian men, women and children at the hands of Israeli-allied Christian Phalange militiamen begins in west Beirut’s Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.

1987: Two dozen countries sign the Montreal Protocol, a treaty designed to save the Earth’s ozone layer by calling on nations to reduce emissions of harmful chemicals by the year 2000.

1994: A federal jury in Anchorage, Alaska, orders Exxon Corp. to pay $5 billion in punitive damages for the 1989 Exxon Valdez (oil spill (the U.S Supreme Court later reduced that amount to $507.5 million).

2001: President George W. Bush, speaking on the South Lawn of the White House, says there was “no question” Osama bin Laden and his followers are the prime suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks; Bush pledges the government would “find them, get them running and hunt them down.”

2007: Contractors for the U.S. security firm Blackwater USA guarding a U.S. State Department convoy in Baghdad open fire on civilian vehicles, mistakenly believing they were under attack; 14 Iraqis die.

O.J. Simpson is arrested in the armed robbery of sports memorabilia collectors in Las Vegas.

2008: President George W. Bush gets a firsthand look at the fury that Hurricane Ike had unleashed on the Gulf Coast with stops in Houston and Galveston, Texas, and a helicopter tour.

2013: Aaron Alexis, a former U.S. Navy reservist, goes on a shooting rampage inside the Washington Navy Yard, killing 12 victims before being shot dead by police.

2017: Tropical Storm Maria, which would batter the Caribbean as a powerful hurricane, forms in the Atlantic.

VINDICATOR FILES

1993: Congressman James A. Traficant Jr. asks Vice President Al Gore for a straight “yes” or “no” answer as to whether a Pentagon accounting center promised to the Mahoning Valley by President Bill Clinton will be built.

The state has identified Youngstown-Warren Airport as the possible site for a huge cargo transport facility, and local airport officials say they must begin planning for that possibility.

Youngstown Board of Education member Don L. Hanni III apologizes to Richard Saul, assistant principal of Volney Rogers Junior High School, for using inappropriate language during a confrontation over Saul’s decision to send students home during a teachers’ strike. The prosecutor’s office says it will file misdemeanor charges against Hanni.

1978: Management of the GF Business Equipment Inc., once the country’s largest manufacturer of metal office furniture, will rededicate itself to its business furniture line.

Tom Miller, 18, a June graduate of Austintown Fitch High School, is the youngest caddy on the PGA and LPGA tours.

Youngstown Law Director Harold Stein approves the payment of $1,168 to city council aides Mary Jane Yurcho and Joanne Murphy, the wives of councilmen, for eight weeks of unused vacation time.

1968: Curtis A. Patmon, 17, of Youngstown, is found shot to death in a car parked in the South Side Drive-In Theater on Market Street Extension.

More than $2,000 and five cases of whiskey are stolen from Grecian Village on West Boardman Street, two blocks from the police station.

A 20-year-old Warren man is being held on an open charge after Secret Service agents arrested him for passing counterfeit $2 bills in Hickory Township, Pa.

1943: Dr. Wilfred Carney, son of Youngstown Municipal Court Clerk Martin J. Carney, is promoted to major and put in charge of a hospital for prisoners of war in Oplika, Ala.

The sixth infantile paralysis victim reported by the Youngstown health department is 8-month-old Donald Mook of Ford Avenue, whose father is in the service in the South Pacific.

Esther Gauss, sister of Dr. Paul Gauss, pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church, is scheduled to return to the U.S. from China, where she has been a missionary since 1911.