This Day in History
In Alaska
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• In 1914, the first governor of Alaska, William Egan, was born in Valdez.
• In 1942, the War Production Board ordered the closure of most Alaska mines in an effort to conserve manpower. It excluded the Alaska-Juneau Mine.
• In 1954, the Alaska Air Command revealed that radar had detected unidentified aircraft flying over Alaska. Rumors had them as either Russian planes looking for A-Bomb targets, Scandinavian jetliners or bush planes.
In the nation
• In 1956, Don Larsen pitched the only perfect game (as well as a no-hitter) in a World Series to date as the New York Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in Game 5, 2-0.
• In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire erupted while another deadly blaze broke out in Peshtigo, Wis.
• In 1934, Bruno Hauptmann was indicted for murder in the death of the son of Charles A. Lindbergh.
• In 1944, "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet," starring Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, made its debut on CBS Radio.
• In 1945, President Truman announced that the secret of the atomic bomb would be shared only with Britain and Canada.
• In 1981, at the White House, President Reagan greeted former Presidents Carter, Ford and Nixon, who were preparing to travel to Egypt for the funeral of Anwar Sadat.
• In 2001, 17 Virginians were killed when a dive boat capsized during a hurricane in Belize. American Leland H. Hartwell and Britons R. Timothy Hunt and Paul M. Nurse won the Nobel Prize in medicine. Radio commentator Rush Limbaugh told listeners he was virtually deaf (Limbaugh later had an electronic device implanted in his skull that restored much of his hearing).
• In 2005, Delphi Corp., the largest U.S. auto supplier, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. An Associated Press Television News crew covering the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina videotaped three New Orleans police officers beating retired teacher Robert Davis. Amtrak resumed passenger rail service to New Orleans as the train called the City of New Orleans arrived with 29 passengers aboard.
In the world
• In 1918, Sgt. Alvin C. York almost single-handedly killed 25 German soldiers and captured 132 in the Argonne Forest in France.
• In 1970, Soviet author Alexander Solzhenitsyn was named winner of the Nobel Prize for literature.
• In 1985, the hijackers of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro killed American passenger Leon Klinghoffer and threw his body overboard.
• In 1996, Pope John Paul II underwent a successful operation to remove his inflamed appendix. American economist William Vickrey and British professor James Mirrlees were named co-winners of the Nobel economics prize (the 82-year-old Vickrey died three days later).
• In 2001, the United States pounded terrorist targets in Afghanistan from the air for a second night. An SAS airliner taking off from Milan, Italy, hit a private jet, careened into an airport building and exploded, killing 118 people.
• In 2005, a major earthquake flattened villages on the Pakistan-India border, killing an estimated 86,000 people.