This Day in History

In Alaska

• Photos

• In 1905, the bill creating the Alaska Road Commission was signed into law by President Teddy Roosevelt.

• In 1925, the first dog team left Nenana in the relay of serum to combat the diphtheria outbreak in Nome.

• In 1936, Scott C. Bone, Alaska's governor from 1921-25, died in Santa Barbara, California.

In the nation

• In 1880, Thomas Edison received a patent for his electric incandescent lamp.

• In 1951, an era of atomic testing in the Nevada desert began, as an Air Force plane dropped a one-kiloton bomb on Frenchman Flats.

• In 1967, astronauts Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, Edward H. White and Roger B. Chaffee died in a flash fire during a test aboard their Apollo I spacecraft in Cape Kennedy, Fla.