This Day in History
In Alaska
• 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 1969, the University of Alaska began its first major oceanographic expedition to the Bering Sea.
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 1-kiloton bomb on Frenchman Flats.
• In 1985, the secret three-day military-satellite mission of the space shuttle Discovery ended with a smooth landing in Florida.
• In 2000, President Clinton proposed a $350 billion tax cut, big spending increases for schools and health care and photo ID licenses for handgun purchases in his final State of the Union address.
• In 2004, John Kerry won the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary. A jury in New York heard opening statements in the trial of Martha Stewart, who was accused of lying about a stock sale (she was convicted the following March and sentenced to five months in prison).
In the world
• In 1943, some 50 bombers struck Wilhelmshaven in the first all-American air raid against Germany in World War II.
• In 1944, the Soviet Union announced the end of the deadly German siege of Leningrad, which had lasted for more than two years.
• In 1945, Soviet troops liberated the Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland.
• In 1967, more than 60 nations signed a treaty banning the orbiting of nuclear weapons.
• In 1973, the Vietnam peace accords were signed in Paris.
• In 1995, about 5,000 mourners gathered at the site of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz to commemorate the 50th anniversary of its liberation.