This Day in History
In Alaska, in the Nation and the World
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In Alaska
• In 1932, the Juneau City Council voted to issue a warning to all steamship companies that stowaways will not be allowed to land.
• In 1959, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Fred Seaton gave Alaska final clearance to begin selecting large chunks of federal land as one of the benefits of statehood.
In the nation
• In 1888, the poem "Casey at the Bat," by Ernest Lawrence Thayer, was first published, in the San Francisco Daily Examiner.
• In 1948, the 200-inch reflecting Hale Telescope at the Palomar Mountain Observatory in California was dedicated.
• In 1968, pop artist Andy Warhol was shot and critically wounded in his New York film studio, known as "The Factory," by Valerie Solanas, an actress and self-styled militant feminist.
• In 1997, the government banned most slaughtered-animal parts from U.S. livestock feed because of concerns over mad cow disease.
• In 2002, President Bush, in Little Rock, Ark., to promote his welfare initiative, said intelligence agencies and the FBI had to do a better job tracking and catching terrorists, emphasizing pursuit of "this shadowy enemy."
In the world
• In 1621, the Dutch West India Company received its charter for a trade monopoly in parts of the Americas and Africa.
• In 1935, the French liner Normandie set a record on its maiden voyage, arriving in New York after crossing the Atlantic in just four days, 11 hours and 42 minutes.
• In 1937, the Duke of Windsor, who had abdicated the British throne, married Wallis Warfield Simpson in Monts, France.
• In 1965, astronaut Edward White became the first American to "walk" in space, during the flight of Gemini 4.
• In 1982, Israel's ambassador to Britain, Shlomo Argov, was shot and critically wounded outside a London hotel. The assassination attempt was followed by Israel's invasion of Lebanon.
• In 1997, after a bloody coup, 1,200 foreigners fled Sierra Leone aboard an American warship.
• In 2002, a rock concert at Buckingham Palace celebrated Queen Elizabeth II's 50 years on the throne.
• In 2006, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, attending a security conference in Singapore, branded Iran the world's leading terrorist nation yet hoped Tehran seriously would consider incentives from the West in exchange for suspending suspect nuclear activities.