This Day in History
In Alaska, in the Nation and the World
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In Alaska
• In 1947, based upon information from Siberian Eskimos who visited St. Lawrence Island, The Anchorage Times reported that the Soviet Union was building a secret military base on the Siberian coast.
• In 1949, the U.S. Air Force confirmed that Eielson Air Force Base would be used for training operations for B-36 bombers.
• In 1964, 11 Japanese companies began a three-week survey of the timber potential of Southcentral Alaska.
In the nation
• In 1777, the Continental Congress - forced to flee in the face of advancing British forces - moved to York, Pa.
• In 1846, Boston dentist William Morton used ether as an anesthetic for the first time as he extracted an ulcerated tooth from merchant Eben Frost.
• In 1954, the first atomic-powered vessel, the submarine USS Nautilus, was commissioned by the Navy.
• In 1962, black student James Meredith was escorted by federal marshals to the campus of the University of Mississippi, where he enrolled for classes the next day.
• In 1982, the situation comedy "Cheers" premiered on NBC-TV.
• In 2002, New Jersey Sen. Robert Torricelli abruptly ended his scandal-tainted re-election campaign just five weeks before the election, leaving Democrats scrambling for a candidate.
In the world
• In 1938, a day after co-signing the Munich Agreement allowing Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain praised the accord on his return home, saying, "I believe it is peace for our time."
• In 1964, an international military tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, found 22 top Nazi leaders guilty of war crimes.
• In 1949, the Berlin Airlift came to an end.
• In 1966, the Republic of Botswana became independent from Britain.
• In 1997, in an unprecedented act of repentance, France's Roman Catholic Church apologized for its silence during the systematic persecution and deportation of Jews by the pro-Nazi Vichy regime.
• In 2006, five people were killed when an overpass near Montreal collapsed.