This Day in History
In Alaska
• In 1935, the first contingent of CCC workers for the great Matanuska colonization project rolled into Anchorage at noon aboard the Alaska Railroad.
In the nation
• In 1861, Arkansas seceded from the Union.
• In 1882, Congress passed, over President Arthur's veto, the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred Chinese immigrants from the U.S. for 10 years.
• In 1935, the Works Progress Administration began operating.
• In 1937, the hydrogen-filled German dirigible Hindenburg burned and crashed in Lakehurst, N.J., killing 35 of the 97 people on board and a Navy crewman on the ground.
• In 1981, Yale architecture student Maya Ying Lin was named winner of a competition to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
• In 1987, CIA Director William J. Casey died at age 74.
• In 1994, former Arkansas state worker Paula Jones filed suit against President Clinton, alleging he'd sexually harassed her in 1991. (Jones reached a settlement with Clinton in November 1998.)