This Day in History

In Alaska, in the Nation and the World

In Alaska

• In 1898, the townsite of Council on the Seward Peninsula was staked and a mining district formed.

• In 1949, Dr. James Ryan, the Territorial commissioner of education, told a Senate committee that Alaska children were of superior intelligence because of the "high-grade" of the territorial pioneers.

• In 1959, U.S. Sen. Ernest Gruening revealed plans to authorize the Army Corps of Engineers to construct a hydroelectric dam at Rampart Canyon on the Yukon River.

• In 1975, 15 Alaska volunteers left on the first leg of a privately funded airlift to bring Vietnamese orphans to the U.S.

In the nation

• In 1788, Maryland became the seventh state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

• In 1958, the United States conducted the first of 35 nuclear test explosions in the Pacific Proving Ground as part of Operation Hardtack I.

• In 1967, heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali refused to be inducted into the Army, the same day Gen. William C. Westmoreland told Congress the U.S. "would prevail in Vietnam."

• In 1988, a flight attendant was killed and more than 60 persons injured when part of the roof of an Aloha Airlines Boeing 737 tore off during a flight from Hilo to Honolulu.

• In 1998, Social Security's trustees in their annual report predicted three extra years of full pension benefits for retiring baby boomers before a potential cash shortfall in 2032. The Senate opened a new round of hearings on alleged abuse and mismanagement at the Internal Revenue Service.

In the world

• In 1789, there was a mutiny on HMS Bounty as the crew of the British ship set Capt. William Bligh and 18 sailors adrift in a launch in the South Pacific.

• In 1945, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, were executed by Italian partisans as they attempted to flee the country.

• In 1952, war with Japan officially ended as a treaty signed in San Francisco the year before took effect.

• In 1958, Vice President Nixon and his wife, Pat, began a goodwill tour of Latin America that was marred by hostile mobs in Lima, Peru, and Caracas, Venezuela.

• In 1996, a man armed with a semiautomatic rifle opened fire on tourists on the Australian island of Tasmania, killing 35 people; he was captured by police after a 12-hour standoff at a guest cottage.

• In 2003, on Saddam Hussein's 66th birthday, delegates from inside and outside Iraq agreed to hold a nation-building meeting and fashion a temporary, post-Saddam government. The Soyuz space capsule carrying a U.S.-Russian space crew docked with the international space station.

• In 2007, a suicide car bomber struck in Karbala, Iraq, killing at least 63 people. A suicide attack on Pakistan's Interior Minister, Aftab Khan Sherpao, killed 28 people; the official was slightly hurt.