This Day in History

In Alaska, in the Nation and the World

In Alaska

• In 1935, 135 Michigan and Wisconsin families, comprising 638 men, women and children, arrived in Seward. They were the second and last big group of colonists the U.S. was placing in the Matanuska Valley.

• In 1979, after four years of research, Juneau whale biologist Chuck Juraz proved that humpback whales migrate between Alaska and Hawaii, using Alaska for feeding grounds and Hawaii for calving.

In the nation

• In 1868, a major train robbery took place near Marshfield, Ind., as members of the Reno gang made off with $96,000 in loot.

• In 1947, the Truman Doctrine was enacted as Congress appropriated military and economic aid for Greece and Turkey.

• In 1972, President Nixon began a visit to the Soviet Union, during which he and Kremlin leaders signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

• In 1992, after a reign lasting nearly 30 years, Johnny Carson hosted NBC's "Tonight Show" for the last time.

• In 1998, Federal Judge Norma Holloway Johnson ruled that Secret Service agents could be compelled to testify before the grand jury in the Monica Lewinsky investigation.

• In 2003, Annika Sorenstam became the first woman since Babe Didrikson Zaharias in 1945 to tee off against the men on the pro tour, playing in the first round of the Colonial golf tournament in Fort Worth, Texas. (Sorenstam missed the cut the next day by four shots.)

• In 2007, two-time Olympic gold medalist speedskater Apolo Anton Ohno and his professional dance partner, Julianne Hough, won ABC's "Dancing With the Stars."

In the world

• In 1939, the foreign ministers of Germany and Italy, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Galeazzo Ciano, signed a "Pact of Steel" committing the two countries to a military alliance.

• In 1968, the nuclear-powered U.S. submarine Scorpion, with 99 men aboard, sank in the Atlantic Ocean. (The remains of the sub were later found on the ocean floor 400 miles southwest of the Azores.)

• In 1969, the lunar module of Apollo 10 flew to within nine miles of the moon's surface in a dress rehearsal for the first lunar landing.

• In 1972, the island nation of Ceylon became the republic of Sri Lanka.

• In 1979, Canadians voted in parliamentary elections that put the Progressive Conservatives in power, ending the 11-year tenure of Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

• In 1998, voters in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland turned out in force to cast ballots giving resounding approval to a Northern Ireland peace accord.

• In 2003, the U.N. Security Council gave the U.S. and Britain a mandate to rule Iraq, ending 13 years of economic sanctions.

• In 2007, British prosecutors accused former KGB agent Andrei Lugovoi of murder in the radioactive poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko. (Russia, however, has refused to extradite Lugovoi.)