This day in history
In Alaska
• In 1904, both the Catholic Church and the Presbyterian Church opened their doors for the first time in Fairbanks.
• In 1938, the cornerstone was laid for the Shrine of St. Therese Chapel, about 15 miles north of Juneau.
• In 1939, compensation for all jurors in Alaskan Judicial districts was raised from $4 to $5 per day.
• In 1974, President Gerald Ford vetoed a bill designed to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other wildlife preserves from pipeline construction and other industrial uses.
In the nation
• In 1735, the second president of the United States, John Adams, was born in Braintree, Mass.
• In 1885, poet Ezra Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho.
• In 1938, the radio play "The War of the Worlds," starring Orson Welles, aired on CBS. (The live drama, which employed fake news reports, panicked some listeners who thought its portrayal of a Martian invasion was true.)
• In 1944, the Martha Graham ballet "Appalachian Spring," with music by Aaron Copland, premiered at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., with Graham in a leading role.
• In 1945, the U.S. government announced the end of shoe rationing.
• In 1972, 45 people were killed when an Illinois Central Gulf commuter train collided with another train in Chicago's South Side.
• In 1979, President Carter announced his choice of federal appeals judge Shirley Hufstedler to head the newly created Department of Education.
• In 1993, Martin Fettman, America's first veterinarian in space, chopped the heads off six rats and performed the world's first animal dissections in space, aboard the shuttle Columbia.
• In 2002, Walter Mondale returned to politics as Minnesota Democrats approved the former vice president as a fill-in for the late Sen. Paul Wellstone less than a week before the election. (However, Mondale ended up losing to Republican Norm Coleman.) Jam Master Jay (Jason Mizell), a rapper with the Run DMC hip-hop group, was killed in a shooting in New York. He was 37.
In the world
• In 1961, the Soviet Union tested a hydrogen bomb with a force estimated at 58 megatons. The Soviet Party Congress unanimously approved a resolution ordering the removal of Josef Stalin's body from Lenin's tomb.
• In 1993, a United Nations deadline for ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to return to power passed with the country's military still in control.
• In 1995, by a vote of 50.6 percent to 49.4 percent, federalists prevailed over separatists in Quebec in a secession referendum.
• In 1998, in Nicaragua, a mudslide caused by Hurricane Mitch killed at least 2,000 people on the slopes of the Casitas volcano in Posoltega.
• In 2002, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's broad-based coalition collapsed when Cabinet ministers from the moderate Labor Party resigned in a dispute over funding for Jewish settlements.