This Day in History
In Alaska
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• In 1968, the Sportsman's Game Preservation Association asked for Gov. Walter Hickel's help as it sought to shorten the moose hunting season around Anchorage.
• In 1970, Sheffield Enterprises Inc. announced it would take over operation of the Baranof Hotel in Juneau. Bill Sheffield later became governor in 1982.
• In 1979, some 60,000 gallons of crude oil leaked from a 5-inch crack in the Trans-Alaska Pipeline contaminating 30 miles of the Atigun River.
In the nation
• In 1776, the Continental Congress formed a committee to draft a Declaration of Independence calling for freedom from Britain.
• In 1919, Sir Barton won the Belmont Stakes, becoming horse racing's first Triple Crown winner.
• In 1947, the government announced the end of household and institutional sugar rationing, to take effect the next day.
• In 1977, Seattle Slew won the Belmont Stakes, capturing the Triple Crown.
• In 1996, closing a congressional career that had lasted 312 decades, Bob Dole said good-bye to the Senate to begin in earnest his campaign for the presidency.
• In 2001, Timothy McVeigh was executed by injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people.
• In 2004, the nation bade a lingering goodbye to former President Ronald Reagan at a stately funeral service in Washington, D.C., followed hours later by a hilltop burial ceremony in his beloved California.
• In 2005, the first tropical storm of the season, Arlene, sloshed ashore in the Florida Panhandle. Afleet Alex won the Belmont Stakes by seven lengths.
In the world
• In 1509, England's King Henry VIII married Catherine of Aragon.
• In 1770, Capt. James Cook, commander of the British ship Endeavour, discovered the Great Barrier Reef off Australia by running onto it.
• In 1942, the United States and the Soviet Union signed a lend-lease agreement to aid the Soviet war effort in World War II.
• In 1963, Buddhist monk Quang Duc immolated himself on a Saigon street to protest the government of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem.
• In 1970, the United States presence in Libya came to an end as the last detachment left Wheelus Air Base.
• In 2005, the world's richest countries agreed in London to write off more than $40 billion of debt owed by the poorest nations. French journalist Florence Aubenas and her Iraqi assistant were freed after more than five months as hostages in Iraq.