In 1951, the old herring reduction plant at Killisnoo was destroyed by fire.
In 1956, the proposed Constitution of the State of Alaska was ratified by the voters in a Primary election.
In 1969, a University of California engineer advised that building a 50-mile bridge from Alaska to Siberia across the Bering Strait was entirely feasible.
In the nation
In 1800, Congress approved a bill establishing the Library of Congress.
In 1877, federal troops were ordered out of New Orleans, ending the North's post-Civil War rule in the South.
In 1962, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology achieved the first satellite relay of a television signal, between Camp Parks, Calif., and Westford, Mass.
In 1968, leftist students at Columbia University in New York began a week-long occupation of several campus buildings.
In 2002, Michael McDermott, a software engineer who'd claimed he was insane when he shot to death seven co-workers, was convicted of murder by a jury in Cambridge, Mass.
In the world
In 1898, Spain declared war on the United States after rejecting America's ultimatum to withdraw from Cuba.
In 1915, the Ottoman Turkish Empire began the brutal mass deportation of Armenians during World War I.
In 1916, some 1,600 Irish nationalists launched the Easter Rising by seizing several key sites in Dublin. (The rising was put down by British forces several days later.)
In 1953, British statesman Winston Churchill was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.
In 1970, the People's Republic of China launched its first satellite, which kept transmitting a song, "The East is Red."
In 1980, the United States launched an abortive attempt to free the American hostages in Iran, a mission that resulted in the deaths of eight U.S. servicemen.
In 1993, The Irish Republican Army exploded a truck bomb in the City of London financial district, killing one man and causing millions of dollars' worth of damage.
In 1998, After a month of confrontation, Russian lawmakers caved in to President Boris Yeltsin, approving acting prime minister Sergei Kiriyenko, 35, as premier. (Kiriyenko was fired just four months later.)