This Day in History
In Alaska
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• In 1894, the Yukon Order of Pioneers was organized at Forty Mile on the Yukon River.
• In 1924, Alaska Gov. Scott C. Bone met with President Calvin Coolidge, asking that Alaska be included in the Federal Highway Act.
• In 1935, the University of Alaska Library at Fairbanks moved into the new library/gymnasium building. It took 13 hours to move 12,000 books.
• In 1953, the Chugach Electric Company began operating the Knik Arm Power Facility on Ship Creek near Anchorage.
• In 1973, the Snettisham Hydroelectric Plant, which supplies Juneau with most of its electricity, was inaugurated.
• In 1978, President Jimmy Carter invoked the 1906 Antiquities Act to designate 56 million acres of land in Alaska as national monuments.
• In 1980, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Cecil Andrus finalized approval for the Alaska Natural Gas Pipeline right-of-way across federal lands from the North Slope into Canada. (The line has yet to be built.)
• In 1986, Steve Cowper took office as the seventh governor of of Alaska.
In the nation
• In 1824, the presidential election was turned over to the U.S. House of Representatives when a deadlock developed between John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, William H. Crawford and Henry Clay. (Adams ended up the winner.)
• In 1904, the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis closed after seven months and some 20 million visitors.
• In 1913, the first drive-in automobile service station, built by Gulf Refining Co., opened in Pittsburgh.
• In 1921, the Navy flew the first nonrigid dirigible to use helium; the C-7 traveled from Hampton Roads, Va., to Washington.
• In 1955, Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Ala., city bus. Mrs. Parks was arrested, sparking a yearlong boycott of the buses by blacks.
• In 1956, the Leonard Bernstein musical "Candide," based on Voltaire, opened on Broadway.
• In 1969, the U.S. government held its first draft lottery since World War II.
• In 2005, a jury in Sarasota, Fla., recommended the death sentence for Joseph Smith, the killer of 11-year-old Carlie Brucia. A dog and its owner found the bodies of Sarah and Philip Gehring, two children who'd been fatally shot by their father and buried in rural Ohio.
In the world
• In 1934, Soviet communist official Sergei M. Kirov, an associate of Josef Stalin, was assassinated in Leningrad, resulting in a massive purge.
• In 1943, President Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin concluded their Tehran conference.
• In 2000, Vicente Fox was sworn in as president of Mexico, ending 71 years of ruling-party domination.
• In 1996, the Arab League held an emergency meeting in Cairo, after which it warned Israel that peace efforts would be endangered if Israel insisted on expanding Jewish settlements.
• In 2001, two suicide bombers blew themselves up in back-to-back explosions at a downtown Jerusalem pedestrian mall, killing 11 bystanders.
• In 2005, a roadside bomb killed 10 U.S. Marines near Fallujah, Iraq. Pakistani officials reported that Hamza Rabia, one of al-Qaida's top five leaders, was killed by Pakistani security forces near the Afghan border. South Africa's highest court ruled in favor of gay marriage.