This Day in History
In Alaska
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• In 1939, Ernest Gruening took office as the 13th territorial governor of Alaska. He was appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
• In 1960, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Fred Seaton established three national wildlife reserves in Alaska: The Arctic National Wildlife Range (9 million acres in the extreme northeastern corner of Alaska); the Izembek National Wildlife Range (415,000 acres on the north side of the Alaska Peninsula); and the Kuskoquim National Wildlife Range (1.8 million acres on the Yukon-Kuskoquim Delta).
• In 1973, the Alaska Marine Highway ferry Le Conte was officially launched.
• In 1979, R. Buckminster Fuller, 84, spoke at the Alaska Legislature's Future Frontiers Conference in Anchorage.
• In 1982, Bill Sheffield took office as the sixth governor of Alaska.
In the nation
• In 1790, Congress moved from New York to Philadelphia.
• In 1884, Army engineers completed construction of the Washington Monument.
• In 1923, a presidential address was broadcast on radio for the first time as President Coolidge spoke to a joint session of Congress.
• In 1947, Everglades National Park in Florida was dedicated by President Truman.
• In 1957, America's first attempt at putting a satellite into orbit failed as Vanguard TV-3 blew up on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Fla.
• In 1969, a free concert by The Rolling Stones at the Altamont Speedway in Livermore, Calif., was marred by the deaths of four people, including one who was stabbed by a Hell's Angel.
• In 1973, House minority leader Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as vice president, succeeding Spiro T. Agnew.
• In 1996, stock markets around the world plunged after comments by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan were taken to mean that U.S. stock prices were too high.
• In 2001, the U.S. House of Representatives, by a one-vote margin, gave President Bush more power to negotiate global trade deals. President Bush dedicated the national Christmas tree to those who had died on Sept. 11 and to GIs who had died in the line of duty.
• In 2005, Sami Al-Arian, a former Florida professor accused of helping lead a terrorist group that carried out suicide bombings against Israel, was acquitted on nearly half the charges against him by a federal court jury in Tampa, Fla.; the jury deadlocked on the other charges. Philadelphia won the first NHL scoreless game that was decided by a shootout, beating Calgary 1-0.
In the world
• In 1921, British and Irish representatives signed a treaty in London providing for creation of an Irish Free State a year later on the same date.
• In 1982, 11 soldiers and six civilians were killed when an Irish National Liberation Army bomb exploded in a pub in Ballykelly, Northern Ireland.
• In 1989, 14 women were shot to death at the University of Montreal's school of engineering by a man who then took his own life.
• In 2001, Yasser Arafat's intensified crackdown on Islamic militants met angry resistance as 1,500 Hamas supporters battled Palestinian riot police outside the home of the group's leader.
• In 2005, two suicide bombers struck Baghdad's police academy, killing at least 43 people. An Iranian military transport plane crashed in a Tehran suburb as it was trying to make an emergency landing, killing at least 115 people, including 21 on the ground.