This Day in History
In Alaska
• In 1913, damage to Nome caused by wind and high water from the Bering Sea was estimated at $1 million.
• In 1942, the Excursion Inlet Army Post, northwest of Juneau, was activated with five officers and 218 enlisted men.
• In 1959, Theodore J. Norby of San Rafael, Calif., was the first person named to the $17,000-a-year position of state commissioner of education.
• In 1979, most of the Prudhoe Bay oil field was shut down, as 50 mph winds, dust and rain combined to short out the central power system. The outage lasted 17 hours. The North Pacific Management Council voted to phase out Japanese tanner crab fishing in the Bering Sea by 1981.
In the nation
• In 1830, the 21st president of the United States, Chester Arthur, was born in Fairfield, Vt.
• In 1892, the Dalton Gang, notorious for its train robberies, was practically wiped out while attempting to rob a pair of banks in Coffeyville, Kan.
• In 1921, the World Series was broadcast on radio for the first time.
• In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called for a "quarantine" of aggressor nations.
• In 1941, former Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, the first Jewish member of the nation's highest court, died in Washington, D.C., at age 84.
• In 1947, President Truman delivered the first televised White House address.
• In 1962, the Beatles' first hit, "Love Me Do," was released in the United Kingdom.
• In 1989, a jury in Charlotte, N.C., convicted former PTL evangelist Jim Bakker of using his television show to defraud followers.
In the world
• In 1931, Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon completed the first nonstop flight across the Pacific Ocean, arriving in Washington state some 41 hours after leaving Japan.
• In 1983, Solidarity founder Lech Walesa was named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
• In 1994, 48 people were found dead in an apparent murder-suicide carried out simultaneously in two Swiss villages by members of a secret religious doomsday cult. Five other bodies were found in an apartment in Montreal, Canada.