This Day in History
In Alaska
• In 1949, the U.S. Air Force confirmed that Eielson Air Force Base would be used for training operations for B-36 bombers.
In the nation
• In 1777, the Congress of the United States - forced to flee in the face of advancing British forces - moved to York, Pa.
• In 1846, dentist William Morton used ether as an anesthetic for the first time on a patient in his Boston office.
• In 1927, Babe Ruth hit his 60th homer of the season to break his own major-league record.
• In 1954, the first atomic-powered vessel, the submarine "Nautilus," was commissioned by the Navy.
• In 1955, actor James Dean was killed in a two-car collision near Cholame, Calif.
• In 1998, the General Accounting Office reported that Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr and his predecessor, Robert Fiske, had spent more than $40 million on the investigation of President Clinton's Arkansas land deals that was expanded to include the probe of the Monica Lewinsky affair.
In the world
• In 1938, British, French, German and Italian leaders decided to appease Adolf Hitler by allowing Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland.
• In 1946, an international military tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, found 22 top Nazi leaders guilty of war crimes.
• In 1993, an estimated 10,000 people were killed when a magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck southern India.