This Day in History

In Alaska

• Photos

• In 1935, William Monroe, Klondike gold rusher and builder of a railroad from Nome to Anvil Creek, died at the age of 94. (He also was the founder of the city of Monrovia in California.)

• In 1967, 157 technicians and clerks went on strike at the Ballistic Missile Early Warning Center site at Clear, Alaska. (The BMEWS remained in operation.)

In the Nation

• In 1776, the British suffered a major defeat in the Battle of Trenton during the Revolutionary War.

• In 1917, during World War I, the U.S. government took over operation of the nation's railroads.

• In 1941, Winston Churchill became the first British prime minister to address a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress.

• In 1944, in the World War II Battle of the Bulge, the embattled U.S. 101st Airborne Division was relieved by units of the 4th Armored Division.

• In 1944, Tennessee Williams' play "The Glass Menagerie" was first performed publicly, at the Civic Theatre in Chicago.

• In 1972, the 33rd president of the United States, Harry S. Truman, died in Kansas City, Mo.

• In 1996, 6-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey was found beaten and strangled in the basement of her family's home in Boulder, Colo. (To date, the slaying remains unsolved.)

• In 2000, Michael McDermott, an employee at an Internet firm in Wakefield, Mass., shot and killed seven co-workers. (McDermott later was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole.)

In the World

• In 1893, Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung was born in Hunan province.

• In 1975, the Soviet Union inaugurated the world's first supersonic transport service with a flight of its Tupolev 144 airliner from Moscow to Alma-Ata.

• In 1992, Milan Panic conceded defeat to Slobodan Milosevic almost a week after Yugoslavia's presidential election.

• In 1997, badly battered South Korean financial markets surged after the International Monetary Fund and the Group of Seven countries agreed on $10 billion emergency loans to Seoul.

• In 2001, the Arabic TV station Al-Jazeera aired videotaped excerpts of Osama bin Laden in which he condemned the United States as a nation that committed crimes against millions of Afghans.