This Day in History
Today
• In 1869, the Fort Wrangell Post Office was established.
• In 1904, the first telegraph message was sent between Sitka and Valdez via the new submarine cable.
• In 1947, a record price of $57.92 was set at a St. Louis auction for government-owned seal skins from the Pribilof Islands.
• In 1959, 100,000 pounds of reindeer meat from Nunivak Island was in transit to markets in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Hawaii. George Byer was elected mayor of Anchorage.
• In 1979, the Dena'ina people of Kenai celebrated their first potlatch in 70 years. More than 300 people came. Potlatches were stopped by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1907.
In the nation
• In 1884, the Naval War College was established in Newport, R.I.
• In 1927, the era of talking pictures arrived with the opening of "The Jazz Singer," a movie starring Al Jolson that featured both silent and sound-synchronized scenes.
• In 1949, President Truman signed the Mutual Defense Assistance Act, totaling $1.3 billion in military aid to NATO countries. American-born Iva Toguri D'Aquino, convicted of being Japanese wartime broadcaster "Tokyo Rose," was sentenced in San Francisco to 10 years in prison and fined $10,000.
• In 1976, in his second debate with Jimmy Carter, President Ford asserted there was "no Soviet domination of eastern Europe." Ford later conceded he'd misspoken.
• In 1979, Pope John Paul II, on a weeklong U.S. tour, became the first pontiff to visit the White House, where he was received by President Carter.
• In 1983, Cardinal Terence Cooke, the spiritual head of the Archdiocese of New York, died at age 62.
• In 1994, in an address to a joint meeting of Congress, South African President Nelson Mandela warned against the lure of isolationism, saying the post-Cold War focus of the United States should be on eliminating "tyranny, instability and poverty" across the globe.
• In 2003, Democrat Bob Graham announced on CNN's "Larry King Live" that he was ending his presidential campaign.
In the world
• In 1889, the Moulin Rouge in Paris opened its doors to the public.
• In 1973, war erupted in the Middle East as Egypt and Syria attacked Israel during the Yom Kippur holiday.
• In 1981, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was shot to death by extremists while reviewing a military parade.
• In 1989, actress Bette Davis died in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, at age 81.
• In 1999, in Mexico, furious rains sent swollen rivers raging through the streets of the Gulf coast city of Villahermosa and caused mudslides; dozens of deaths were reported in eastern Mexico's coastal mountain ranges.