This Day in History
In Alaska
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• In 1897, the Skagway post office was established with William B. Sampson as postmaster.
• In 1939, the seventh legal hanging in Alaska occurred in Juneau. Nelson Charles had been convicted of killing his mother-in-law in a drunken rage.
• In 1954, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner published a 144-page "Progress Edition" with dozens of articles discussing current and future economic potential for Alaska. It sold for 25 cents instead of the normal 10 cents.
• In 1959, the judge came by plane, the applicants by dogsled. The courtroom was under the wing of a plane, as Judge Vernon Forbes naturalized as U.S. citizens two women who came to Savoonga, Alaska from Siberia 35 years before.
• In 1978, the Iditarod National Historic Trail was designated.
In the nation
• In 1775, the U.S. Marines were organized under authority of the Continental Congress.
• In 1919, the American Legion opened its first national convention, in Minneapolis.
• In 1938, Kate Smith first sang Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" on her CBS radio program, which aired Thursdays.
• In 1954, the Iwo Jima Memorial was dedicated by President Eisenhower in Arlington, Va.
• In 1969, the children's educational program "Sesame Street" made its debut on PBS.
• In 1975, the ore-hauling ship Edmund Fitzgerald and its crew of 29 vanished during a storm in Lake Superior.
• In 1976, the Utah Supreme Court gave the go-ahead for convicted murderer Gary Gilmore to be executed, according to his wishes. (The sentence was carried out in January 1977.)
• In 1996, a bomb ripped through a crowd of mourners in a Moscow cemetery, killing 14 people and wounding nearly 50. The Bosnian Serbs' new military commander (Major General Pero Colic), was sworn in, a day after General Ratko Mladic, a war crimes suspect, was dismissed.
• In 2005, Chris Carpenter of the St. Louis Cardinals won the National League Cy Young Award.
In the world
• In 1871, journalist-explorer Henry M. Stanley found Scottish missionary David Livingstone, who had not been heard from for years, near Lake Tanganyika in central Africa.
• In 1928, Hirohito was enthroned as Emperor of Japan.
• In 1986, Camille Sontag and Marcel Coudari, two Frenchmen who had been held hostage in Lebanon, were released.
• In 2001, President Bush, in an address to the U.N. General Assembly, warned that all nations were possible targets of terrorism and urged them to join with the United States in a campaign to prevent more attacks. The World Trade Organization formally approved China's membership. Algeria found itself caught in a fierce 36-hour storm that killed an estimated 886 people. Australian Prime Minister John Howard and his conservative government won a third term in national elections.