This Day in History
In Alaska
• In 1886, the Kensington gold lode, north of Juneau, was discovered.
• In 1898, placer gold was discovered on Porcupine Creek, a tributary of the Chilkat River near Haines.
• In 1926, a major fire in Douglas burned the entire eastern part of the town, including the Native village.
In the nation
• In 1845, the U.S. Naval Academy opened in Annapolis, Md.
• In 1935, George Gershwin's opera "Porgy and Bess" opened on Broadway.
• In 1973, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, accused of accepting bribes, pleaded no contest to one count of federal income tax evasion and resigned his office.
• In 1978, President Carter signed a bill authorizing the Susan B. Anthony dollar.
• In 2002, the House voted 296-133 to give President Bush the broad authority he'd sought to use military force against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, with or without U.N. support. Two executives who'd overseen WorldCom's financial record-keeping pleaded guilty to charges stemming from a federal probe of the company's multibillion-dollar accounting scandal.
In the world
• In 1911, revolutionaries under Sun Yat-sen overthrew China's Manchu dynasty.
• In 1938, Germany completed its annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland.
• In 1943, Chiang Kai-shek took the oath of office as president of China.
• In 1970, Quebec Labor Minister Pierre Laporte was kidnapped by the Quebec Liberation Front, a militant separatist group. Laporte's body was found about a week later.
• In 1981, funeral services were held in Cairo for Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat, who had been assassinated by Muslim extremists.
• In 1985, U.S. fighter jets forced an Egyptian plane carrying the hijackers of the Italian cruise ship "Achille Lauro" to land in Italy, where the gunmen were taken into custody.
• In 1993, thousands of Somalis demonstrated in the capital of Mogadishu to support warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid. That event coincided with the arrival of special U.S. envoy Robert Oakley. In Greece, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement, led by Andreas Papandreou, won a solid majority of seats in parliamentary elections.