This Day in History
In Alaska
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• In 1943, the city of Pelican, on Chichagof Island in Southeast Alaska, was incorporated.
• In 1946, the first mass air movement of Army families to Alaska, the Pan American "Nursery Special," took off from Seattle, carrying nine Army wives and 11 children, to join their families in Fairbanks.
• In 1959, a group known as the Detroit 59'ers was finishing houses in Talkeetna. The group of seven families was part of a caravan from Detroit settling in homesteads on the Kenai Peninsula.
• In 1968, the state began its Open To Entry program, allowing the staking of as many as five acres of land.
• In 1969, a fire of undetermined origin destroyed a major portion of the White Pass and Yukon Route's railroad repair facilities in Skagway.
• In 1970, Metlakatla, in Southeast Alaska, opened its first banking office.
• In 1979, the Department of Public Safety began a round-up of exotic pets whose owners did not have a permit to keep them. There were fears of diseases that exotic species might pass on to indigenous Alaska species. An arsonist set fire to Bobby McGee's Restaurant, causing $3 million damages in what was then worst arson fire in Anchorage history.
In the nation
• In 1914, the Clayton Antitrust Act was passed by Congress.
• In 1966, President Johnson signed a bill creating the Department of Transportation.
• In 1969, peace demonstrators staged activities across the country, including a candlelight march around the White House, as part of a moratorium against the Vietnam War.
• In 1976, in the first debate of its kind between vice-presidential nominees, Democrat Walter F. Mondale and Republican Bob Dole faced off in Houston.
• In 1991, despite sexual harassment allegations by Anita Hill, the Senate narrowly confirmed the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, 52-48.
• In 1996, CSX Corp., announced plans to buy Conrail Inc. for $8.4 billion to create the nation's third largest railroad.
• In 2001, officials announced that a letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle had tested positive for anthrax, and that the infant son of an ABC News producer in New York had developed skin anthrax. Bethlehem Steel Corp., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
• In 2003, 11 people were killed when a Staten Island ferry slammed into a maintenance pier. (The ferry's pilot, who'd blacked out at the controls, later pleaded guilty to manslaughter.)
• In 2005, a crowd that had gathered to protest a neo-Nazi march in Toledo, Ohio, turned violent, prompted the mayor to declare a state of emergency.
In the world
• In 1917, Dutch dancer Mata Hari, convicted of spying for the Germans, was executed by a French firing squad outside Paris.
• In 1928, the German dirigible Graf Zeppelin landed in Lakehurst, N.J., completing its first commercial flight across the Atlantic.
• In 1945, the former premier of Vichy France, Pierre Laval, was executed.
• In 1946, Nazi war criminal Hermann Goering poisoned himself hours before he was to have been executed.
• In 1964, it was announced that Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev had been removed from office. He was succeeded as premier by Alexei N. Kosygin and as Communist Party secretary by Leonid I. Brezhnev.
• In 2005, Iraqis voted to approve a constitution.