This Day in History
In Alaska, in the Nation and the World
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In Alaska
• In 1956, KINY-TV signed on the air as Juneau's first television station.
• In 1959, a Canadian engineer proposed exchanging Alaska's panhandle for Yukon Territory land west of the Alaska Highway.
• In 1964, Anchorage's highway link with the Kenai Peninsula was cut as an extremely high tide washed out part of the road near Portage.
• In 1974, the National Bank of Alaska predicted that 5,000 families would migrate to Anchorage in 1974, and about 2,500 would migrate to Fairbanks.
In the nation
• In 1935, Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in Akron, Ohio.
• In 1964, the Senate voted to limit further debate on a proposed civil rights bill, shutting off a filibuster by Southern states.
• In 1977, James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., escaped from Brushy Mountain State Prison in Tennessee with six others; he was recaptured June 13.
• In 1978, Affirmed won the Belmont Stakes and with it, horse racing's Triple Crown.
• In 1985, socialite Claus von Bulow was acquitted by a jury in Providence, R.I., at his retrial on charges he'd tried to murder his heiress wife, Martha "Sunny" von Bulow.
• In 1997, former Black Panther Geronimo Pratt was released on bail after 27 years behind bars on what he says were trumped-up murder charges. (Authorities decided against retrying him.)
• In 2007, Jazil cruised to victory, holding off Bluegrass Cat in the Belmont Stakes.
In the world
• In 1865, the Richard Wagner opera "Tristan und Isolde" premiered in Munich, Germany.
• In 1907, 11 men in five cars set out from the French embassy in Beijing on a race to Paris. (Prince Scipione Borghese of Italy was the first to arrive in the French capital two months later.)
• In 1940, Italy declared war on France and Britain; Canada declared war on Italy.
• In 1942, the Gestapo massacred 173 male residents of Lidice, Czechoslovakia, in retaliation for the killing of a Nazi official.
• In 1967, the Middle East War ended as Israel and Syria agreed to observe a United Nations-mediated cease-fire.
• In 1981, in Frascati, Italy, 6-year-old Alfredo Rampi fell down an artesian well; the story ended tragically as efforts to rescue him proved futile.
• In 1997, Pope John Paul II bade farewell to his "beloved" native Poland as he ended an 11-day pilgrimage.
• In 2007, two Saudis and one Yemeni hanged themselves at the Guantanamo Bay military prison, the first successful suicides at the base after dozens of attempts. Justine Henin-Hardenne won the French Open, beating Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-4, 6-4.