This Day in History
In Alaska
• In 1906, the first message over telegraph cable between Juneau and Wrangell was sent.
• In 1939, buffalo in the Big Delta were reported to be "raiding" an airfield at night and destroying freight in the process. The animals were under the jurisdiction of the Alaska Game Commission.
• In 1964, a fire in Juneau destroyed the Salvation Army store and the Harbor Leather Co.
• In 1973, the U.S. Army at Fort Wainwright agreed to sell electricity to the Golden Valley Electrical Association.
• In 1978, the U.S. Department of the Interior issued temporary regulations permitting subsistence hunting, fishing, and trapping in 14 of the 15 national monuments created by President Jimmy Carter earlier in the month.
• In 1979, the Alaska Supreme Court upheld the ritual of potlatch when it reversed the conviction of a man who transported a moose out of season to a traditional funeral potlatch in Minto, northwest of Fairbanks.
In the nation
• 1620, Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower went ashore for the first time at present-day Plymouth, Mass.
• In 1913, the first crossword puzzle was published, in the New York World.
• In 1968, Apollo Eight was launched on a mission to orbit the moon.
• In 1978, police in Des Plaines, Ill., arrested John W. Gacy Jr. and began unearthing the remains of 33 men and boys that Gacy was later convicted of murdering.
In the world
• In 1898, scientists Pierre and Marie Curie discovered the radioactive element radium.
• In 1945, Gen. George S. Patton died in Heidelberg, Germany, of injuries from a car accident.
• In 1948, the state of Eire (formerly the Irish Free State) declared its independence.
• In 1958, Charles de Gaulle was elected to a seven-year term as the first president of the Fifth Republic of France.
• In 1971, the U.N. Security Council chose Kurt Waldheim to succeed U Thant as Secretary-General.
• In 1988, 270 people were killed when a terrorist bomb exploded aboard a Pam Am Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, sending wreckage crashing to the ground.