This Day in History

In Alaska, in the Nation and the World

In Alaska

• In 1868, Hiram Ketchum Jr. became the first collector of customs for Alaska.

• In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed the Alexander Archipelago Forest Reserve.

• In 1938, the first scheduled Pan American air express flight from Seattle to Juneau landed at Auke Bay.

• In 1959, Gov. William Egan took delivery of a new Lincoln sedan as the governor's official car. The midnight blue car replaced a 1953 Lincoln used by the last two governors of the territory.

• In 1959, the first commercial jet flight landed in Anchorage as a Pan American Airways Boeing 707 enroute to Tokyo stopped for fuel.

In the nation

• In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Economic Opportunity Act, a nearly $1 billion anti-poverty measure.

• In 1977, the U.S. launched Voyager 2, an unmanned spacecraft carrying a 12-inch copper phonograph record containing greetings in dozens of languages, samples of music and sounds of nature.

• In 1986, postal employee Patrick Henry Sherrill went on a deadly rampage at a post office in Edmond, Okla., shooting 14 fellow workers to death before killing himself.

• In 1998, Monica Lewinsky went before a grand jury for a second round of explicit testimony about her White House encounters with President Bill Clinton.

• In 2003, the United States won the women's overall team gold medal at the World Gymnastics Championships in Anaheim, Calif.; Romania took the silver medal and Australia, the bronze.

• In 2007, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama expressed irritation with the "Obama Girl" Web video, saying it had upset his daughters.

In the world

• In 1988, eight British soldiers were killed by an Irish Republican Army land mine that destroyed a military bus near Omagh, County Tyrone in Northern Ireland.

• In 1998, retaliating 13 days after the deadly embassy bombings in East Africa, U.S. forces launched cruise missile strikes against alleged terrorist camps in Afghanistan and what was described as a chemical plant in Sudan. Monica Lewinsky went before a grand jury for a second round of explicit testimony about her White House encounters with President Clinton.

• In 2003, hundreds of thousands marched in Venezuela, demanding the recall of President Hugo Chavez.

• In 2007, tens of thousands of tourists fled the beaches of the Mayan Riviera as Hurricane Dean roared toward Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. A roadside bomb killed the governor of the predominantly Shiite Muthanna province in Iraq.

• In 2007, a China Airlines Boeing 737-800 exploded in a fireball at an airport gate in Okinawa seconds after all 157 passengers and eight crew had safely evacuated.

• In 2007, hotel magnate Leona Helmsley died in Greenwich, Conn., at age 87.