This Day in History

In Alaska, in the Nation and the World

In Alaska

• In 1949, U.S. military officials announced plans for a permanent arctic equipment testing station at Big Delta. Anchorage set a new winter snowfall record of 104.3 inches.

• In 1958, a Juneau man drove away a young black bear by kicking it in the rump.

• In 1970, an apparent oil spill in Bristol Bay killed as many as 86,000 murres (a kind of seabird).

In the nation

• In 1865, the steamer Sultana exploded on the Mississippi River near Memphis, Tenn., killing more than 1,400 people, mostly freed Union prisoners of war.

• In 1973, acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray resigned after it was revealed that he had handed over bureau files on the Watergate burglary to the Nixon White House.

• In 1978, convicted Watergate defendant John D. Ehrlichman was released from an Arizona prison after serving 18 months.

• In 1978, 51 construction workers plunged to their deaths when a scaffold inside a cooling tower at the Pleasants Power Station site in West Virginia fell 168 feet to the ground.

• In 1998, a Pentagon panel said the remains of the Vietnam veteran in the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery should be exhumed to determine whether they belonged to Air Force 1st Lt. Michael J. Blassie, as his family believed. (The remains were later positively identified as Blassie's.)

• In 2003, Kevin Millwood pitched his first career no-hitter to lead the Philadelphia Phillies over the San Francisco Giants 1-0.

• In 2007, President Bush and visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe threatened stronger punitive actions against North Korea if it reneged on a promise to padlock its sole nuclear reactor. The government reported economic growth slowed to a near crawl of 1.3 percent in the first quarter of 2007, the worst performance in four years.

In the world

• In 1521, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan was killed by natives in the Philippines.

• In 1570, Pope Pius V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I.

• In 1805, during the First Barbary War, an American-led force of Marines and mercenaries captured the city of Derna, on the shores of Tripoli.

• In 1932, American poet Hart Crane, 32, drowned after jumping from a steamer into the Gulf of Mexico while en route to New York.

• In 1967, Expo '67 was officially opened in Montreal by Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson.

• In 2003, the U.S. military arrested the self-anointed mayor of Baghdad, Mohammed Mohsen al-Zubaidi. Nicanor Duarte won Paraguay's presidential election.

• In 2007, a judge in Madrid indicted three U.S. soldiers in the 2003 death of Jose Couso, a Spanish journalist who was killed when their tank opened fire at a hotel in Baghdad. (The U.S. has refused to hand over the soldiers.)