This Day in History
In Alaska
• In 1959, Sen. E. L. (Bob) Bartlett won a coin-toss with Sen. Ernest Gruening to claim the distinction of being Alaska's "senior" senator. The first shipment of new Alaskan 7-cent airmail stamps sold out in Anchorage, and Governor Egan had surgery for removal of a gall stone.
• In 1961, Mount Trident - in the Katmai National Monument in the Alaska Peninsula - erupted, sending a column of smoke and ash nearly 20,000 feet into the air.
In the Nation
• In 1838, Samuel Morse first publicly demonstrated his telegraph, in Morristown, N.J..
• In 1912, New Mexico became the 47th state.
• In 1919, the 26th president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, died in Oyster Bay, N.Y., at age 60.
• In 1945, George Herbert Walker Bush married Barbara Pierce in Rye, N.Y.
• In 1982, truck driver William G. Bonin was convicted in Los Angeles of being the "freeway killer" who had murdered 14 young men and boys.
• In 1993, authorities rescued Jennifer Stolpa and her infant son, Clayton, after Mrs. Stolpa's husband, James, succeeded in reaching help following the family's eight-day ordeal in the snow-covered Nevada desert.