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Palmer Hay Flats State Game Refuge
Reflections Lake
Robert M. Braley Jr., Photographer
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Reflections Lake
Chugach Mountains / Pioneer Peak
Wild Blue Iris (Iris setosa)
Lesser Yellow Legs
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Arctic Lupine (Lupinus ancticus)
Alaska Introduction
Alaska is a "constituent state of the United States of America. It lies at the extreme northwest of the North American continent and is the largest peninsula in the Western Hemisphere. Its 591,004 square miles (1,530,700 square km) include some 15,000 square miles (38,800 square km) of fjords and inlets, and its three faces to the sea have about 34,000 miles (54,400 km) of indented tidal coastline and 6,600 total miles (10,600 km) of coast fronting the open sea. Alaska borders the Arctic Ocean on the north and northwest, the Bering Strait and the Bering Sea on the west, and the Pacific Ocean and Gulf of Alaska on the south. The land boundaries on the east cut across some 1,150 miles (1,850 km) of high mountains to separate the state from the Canadian Yukon Territory and British Columbia province. Rimming the state on the south is one of the Earth's most active earthquake belts. In the Alaska Range north of Anchorage, Mount McKinley (Denali), at 20,320 feet (6,194 metres), is the highest peak in North America. The capital is Juneau, which lies in the southeast in the panhandle region." Ref. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online - article #9111277
"When it became the 49th state on January 3, 1959, Alaska increased the nation's size by nearly 20 percent. The new area included vast stretches of unexplored land and untapped resources. At the time Secretary of State William H. Seward negotiated its purchase from Russia in 1867, however, Alaska was known as Seward's Folly. Its settlement and exploitation have been hindered by its distance from the rest of the nation and by geographic and climatic impediments to travel and communications; Alaska continues to be the country's last frontier. More than half of the state's inhabitants live in the Greater Anchorage area." Ref. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online - article #9111277
Both residents and visitors are drawn to Alaska by the region’s wild beauty and storied past. Alaska’s history has not always been happy for its traditional Native cultures, wildlife, and lands. There have been times when, and it is no exaggeration to say, Alaska’s history has dealt downright catastrophic events. However, we cannot ignore the past as it allows us the chance to learn for the future.
"The question of development versus preservation in Alaska has been heightened by commercial and ecological uses of land: the Alaska Highway gas-pipeline project, native Alaskans' land claims, noncommercial whaling by native peoples, and related matters. The conflicts between conservationists and petroleum companies over the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which runs from the oil-rich North Slope on the Arctic Ocean to Valdez in the south, was a continuation of the century-long effort to find a balance between conservation and development in this enormous land. Ref. "Encyclopedia Britannica Online - artical #9111277
"The last American frontier, Alaska is the largest of the states in size and the second smallest in population. Nearly everything about this 49th state is big. Its Mount McKinley is higher than any other peak in North America. Its Yukon River is one of the longest navigable waterways in the world. Huge animals still thrive in its open spaces—Kodiak, grizzly, black, and polar bears; moose, caribou, musk-oxen, wolves; otter, walrus, seals, humpback and killer whales.
Alaska is a land of spectacular contrasts—smoking volcanoes and frozen tundra, hot springs and ice floes, creeping glaciers and virgin forests. This vast, raw, and rugged land thrusts a chain of volcanic islands more than a thousand miles southwest into the Bering Sea. Reaching beyond the international date line, the land area originally spanned four time zones. It juts northward far into the Arctic Circle, and to the south its Panhandle extends for miles between the Pacific Ocean and the Canadian Rockies.
The history of Alaska dates back to the end of the Upper Paleolithic Period (around 12,000 BC), when Asiatic groups crossed the Bering Land Bridge into what is now western Alaska. At the time of European contact by the Russian explorers, the area was populated by Alaska Native groups. The name "Alaska" derives from the Aleut word alaxsxaq, meaning "mainland" (literally, "the object toward which the action of the sea is directed").
The first European contact with Alaska occurred in the 1741, when Vitus Bering led an expedition for the Russian Navy aboard the St. Peter. After his crew returned to Russia bearing sea otter pelts judged to be the finest fur in the world, small associations of fur traders began to sail from the shores of Siberia towards the Aleutian islands. The first permanent European settlement was founded in 1784, and the Russian-America Company carried out expanded colonization program during the early to mid-1800s. Despite these efforts, the Russians never fully colonized Alaska, and the colony was never very profitable. William H. Seward, the U.S. Secretary of State, engineered the Alaskan purchase in 1867 for $7.2 million.
The first European contact with Alaska occurred in the 1741, when Vitus Bering led an expedition for the Russian Navy aboard the St. Peter. After his crew returned to Russia bearing sea otter pelts judged to be the finest fur in the world, small associations of fur traders began to sail from the shores of Siberia towards the Aleutian islands.
The Stars and Stripes have flown over Alaska since March 30, 1867, when the vast land was purchased from Russia for 7.2 million dollars. In 1959 Alaska became the first new state since New Mexico and Arizona had achieved statehood in 1912, which was also the year Alaska was incorporated as a territory—the first step toward statehood.
The state is so large that it increased the area of the United States by a fifth. Alaska is more than twice the size of Texas, long its predecessor as the largest state. About a third of the vast area is forested, and glaciers cover more than 28,800 square miles (74,590 square kilometers). The Malaspina glacier complex is larger than the state of Rhode Island.
The name Alaska comes from the Aleut word alaxsxaq, meaning “object toward which the action of the sea is directed”—that is, the mainland. Its nicknames are the Land of the Midnight Sun and America's Last Frontier. It was once labeled “Seward's folly” and “Seward's icebox” in ridicule of the secretary of state who negotiated the purchase of what was considered a liability.
"The original discoverers of Alaska, most authorities believe, were migratory hunters from Asia. In a series of waves beginning about 30,000 years ago, they followed game across a wide, now-vanished land bridge that sometimes connected Siberia and Alaska.
About 8000 B.C., the last Ice Age ended and earth wide warming released water previously trapped in glaciers. The rising Bering Sea submerged the land bridge, severing easy movement between the two continents. Today, Alaska and Siberia's Chukchi Peninsula are divided by the shallow Bering Strait, 56 miles wide at its narrowest point.
Descendants of those early Asian people became the three broad Native groups of present-day Alaska: Aleuts, Eskimos, and Indians. Each of these groups created its own rich spirit world and unique ways of surviving, and even prospering, in the often-harsh North. For hunters, aided by snowshoes, dogsleds, and a deep knowledge of weather patterns, the frozen landscape was a highway rather than a frightening barrier. Likewise, for coastal kayakers and canoeists, the cold ocean straits and passages became trade and communication arteries. And despite the northern latitude, the land could be generous, especially along the coasts where fish, waterfowl, and marine mammals made leisure, and even high culture, possible.
Archaeological digs indicate Alaska was settled nearly 6,000 years ago and there was frequent contact among the Dena'ina, Pacific and Chugach Eskimo tribes.
Early Russian traders, who had settled along the Pacific Ocean, heard rumors of this land. Even though at its closest point the mainland of Alaska lies only 60 miles from Siberia, early explorers somehow missed finding it.
In 1725, a Dane, Vitus Bering, was appointed by Russia's Peter the Great to seek the fabled Northeast Passage through the Artic to India and China. On July 16, 1741, Bering landed a small party on an island near Prince William Sound, thus discovering Alaska.
Russian fur merchants began to arrive in the 1740s. The coming of the Europeans, as elsewhere in North and South America, had a drastic impact on the Native population. Europeans unwittingly introduced measles, smallpox, and other maladies for which the Natives had no immunity. The introduction of liquor and firearms also speeded the erosion of Natives' traditional lives. In 1741, the year Vitus Bering claimed Alaska for Russia, the Aleut population is thought to have been between 12,000 and 15,000. By 1800 it had dwindled to 2,000. A similar fate befell some other Native groups, such as the Haida in the southeastern panhandle of Alaska.
Captain Cook made his famous voyage to Alaska in 1778 and drew detailed maps of the area, naming such landmarks as Mount St. Augustine, Montague Island, Prince William Sound, Turnagain Arm and Cape Elizabeth.
The first permanent Russian settlement was established on Kodiak Island in 1783, and for the next 50 years, Russia explored and colonized the area.
There were notable cases of harmony between Natives and newcomers. Contacts with outsiders, at least temporarily, actually enriched the indigenous cultures. On the Southeast coast, for example, the ready availability of iron tools encouraged an expansion of Native woodworking traditions. New wealth created by the fur trade made more frequent and lavish ceremonial feasts, or potlatches, possible.
But the sometimes violent struggle for control of the region led inevitably to European dominance. Some Russian Orthodox priests and Anglo-American missionaries made sincere, though sometimes misguided, efforts to protect and educate the Natives. Yet in Russian America, as in the Canadian and American West, the commercial drive usually won out. A favorite saying of the rough-and-ready promyshlenniki (Russian fur traders} could just as easily describe the unrestrained conduct of many of Alaska's other foreign visitors: "God is in his heaven, and the Cesar is far away."
Over the past 250 years, Alaska has seen a series of boom-and-bust "rushes" to exploit the land: rushes for fur, gold, copper, salmon, oil, and other natural resources. Some people came and stayed, simply because Alaska is like nowhere else - wild, extreme, and amazing. Still, the aim often has been to take the rewards of the land and sea, then enjoy them somewhere else. Many Alaskans see a recurring theme of neglect by federal authorities and exploitation by "outside interests." While the notion is easily exaggerated, the fact remains that today, decades after becoming a state, much of Alaska's economic fate remains under control of the Lower 48 states. Much of the Alaskan fishing fleet, for example, is based not in Alaska, but in the State of Washington.
Development of a modern tourism industry in the early 1970’s has brought millions of visitors to Alaska’s once-remote frontier in a “tourist rush.” The more daring travelers come by car or motor home via the Alaska-Canada Highway (ALCAN), built during World War II (WWII) for the war effort. However, most come by air or sea. A state owned ferry system, the “Alaska Marine Highway”, has linked southeast Alaska to British Columbia and the state of Washington since the early 1960’s. Each year thousands of ferry travelers experience the stunning sea and landscapes of the Inside Passage via the Alaska Marine Highway.
Since the 1970’s, the cruise ship industry has met that same growing tourist demand with cruises to Glacier Bay National Park. By the beginning of the 21st century, the cruise ship industry had expanded its service to many Ports-Of-Call in Alaska. Currently the most highly visited port of call for cruise ships is the City of Seward.
Alaska’s human history – from the prehistoric arrival of the earliest Siberian hunters to today’s Arctic Slope oil exploration – is a unified simple but grand theme: people’s efforts to maintain a living from the region’s vast natural resources despite its extreme conditions.
God endowed Alaska - The Great Land with wealth, scenery, and a scope surpassed by few regions on the earth. Alaska is a virtual subcontinent more than twice the size of the state of Texas. It contains 16 percent of the United States' land area. Alaska’s population has always been tiny. At the time of the U.S. purchase in 1867, Alaska had about 30,000 people, more than 29,000 of them Native American. By 1993, despite statehood and the oil boom, Alaska’s population had grown to only an estimated 607,000. Today, Alaska’s population remains approximately the same as in 1993.
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Americas, their descendants, and many ethnic groups who identify with those peoples. They are often also referred to as Native Americans, First Nations and by Christopher Columbus' historical mistake "American Indians" or "AmerIndians".[27]
The original discoverers of Alaska, most authorities believe, were migratory hunters from Asia. In a series of waves beginning about 30,000 years ago, they followed game across a wide, now-vanished land bridge that sometimes connected Siberia and Alaska.
According to the still debated New World migration model, a migration of humans from Eurasia to the Americas took place via Beringia, a land bridge which formerly connected the two continents across what is now the Bering Strait. The minimum time depth by which this migration had taken place is confirmed at c. 12,000 years ago, with the upper bound (or earliest period) remaining a matter of some unresolved contention. These early Paleoamericans soon spread throughout the Americas, diversifying into many hundreds of culturally distinct nations and tribes. According to the oral histories of many of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, they have been living there since their genesis, described by a wide range of traditional creation accounts.[27]
About 10,000 years ago, the last Ice Age ended and earth wide warming released water previously trapped in glaciers. The rising Bering Sea submerged the land bridge, severing easy movement between the two continents. Today, Alaska and Siberia's Chukchi Peninsula are divided by the shallow Bering Strait, 56 miles wide at its narrowest point.
Descendants of those early Asian people became the three broad Native groups of present-day Alaska: Aleuts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleut), Eskimos (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo), and Dena'ina Indians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dena'ina), . Each of these groups created its own rich spirit world and unique ways of surviving, and even prospering, in the often-harsh North. For hunters, aided by snowshoes, dogsleds, and a deep knowledge of weather patterns, the frozen landscape was a highway rather than a frightening barrier. Likewise, for coastal kayakers and canoeists, the cold ocean straits and passages became trade and communication arteries. And despite the northern latitude, the land could be generous, especially along the coasts where fish, waterfowl, and marine mammals made leisure, and even high culture, possible.
Archaeological digs indicate Alaska was settled nearly 6,000 years ago and there was frequent contact among the Dena'ina (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dena'ina), Pacific and Chugach Eskimo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo) tribes.
June 8, 632, Muhammad, the founder of the religion of Islam and of the Muslim community, died in Medina.
October 12, 1492, The New World was “discovered” this day in 1492 when land (most likely San Salvador) was sighted in the Caribbean from the Pinta, one of the three ships that participated in Christopher Columbus's historic first voyage. [2]
October 27, 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed to Cuba and claimed the island for Spain. Application of the term "Indian" originated with Christopher Columbus, who thought that he had arrived in the East Indies. This has served to imagine a kind of racial or cultural unity for the autochthonous peoples of the Americas. Once created, the unified "Indian" was codified in law, religion, and politics. The unitary idea of "Indians" was not originally shared by indigenous peoples, but many now embrace the identity.
November 11, 1493, Christopher Columbus discovered the island of St. Martin. [2]
October 21, 1520, On this day in 1520, explorer Ferdinand Magellan and three Spanish ships entered the strait later named for him, sailing between the mainland tip of South America and the island of Tierra del Fuego toward the Pacific Ocean.
August 17, 1590, John White returned to Roanoke Island, Virginia, from England and found no trace of the colony (now called the Lost Colony) that he had left there three years earlier.
Early Russian traders, who had settled along the Pacific Ocean, heard rumors of this land. Even though at its closest point the mainland of Alaska lies only 60 miles from Siberia, early explorers somehow missed finding it.
April 26, 1607, The first permanent English settlers in North America landed at Cape Henry, Chesapeake Bay, and they later formed Jamestown.
April 5, 1614, Powhatan Indian Pocahontas married Virginia planter and colonial official John Rolfe.
November 21, 1620, 41 male passengers on the Mayflower, prior to landing at Plymouth, Massachusetts, signed the Mayflower Compact, by which they agreed to abide by the laws of the new government they would establish.
April 5, 1621, The Mayflower departed for England after having deposited 102 Pilgrims at what became the American colony of Plymouth (Massachusetts).
October 9, 1635, Roger Williams was banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony, and, as a result, he later founded the colony of Rhode Island. [2]
October 28, 1636, Harvard University, the oldest institute of higher learning in the United States, was founded by the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
October 14, 1644, English Quaker leader and advocate of religious freedom William Penn, who oversaw the founding of the American Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, was born.
October 28, 1704, John Locke, an initiator of the Enlightenment and founder of British Empiricism whose ideas inspired liberalism and influenced the American and French revolutions and the U.S. Constitution, died this day.
November 22, 1718, the pirate Blackbeard was killed off the coast of North Carolina.
In 1725, a Dane, Vitus Bering, was appointed by Russia's Peter the Great to seek the fabled Northeast Passage through the Artic to India and China. On July 16, 1741, Bering landed a small party on an island near Prince William Sound, thus discovering Alaska.
February 22, 1732, Called the “Father of His Country,” George Washington, general and commander in chief of the colonial armies in the American Revolution (1775–83) and first president of the United States (1789–97), was born.
May 29, 1736, Orator Patrick Henry, a major figure of the American Revolution, was born in Studley, Virginia.
Russian fur merchants began to arrive in the 1740s. The coming of the Europeans, as elsewhere in North and South America, had a drastic impact on the Native population. Europeans unwittingly introduced measles, smallpox, and other maladies for which the Natives had no immunity. The introduction of liquor and firearms also speeded the erosion of Natives' traditional lives. In 1741, the year Vitus Bering claimed Alaska for Russia, the Aleut population is thought to have been between 12,000 and 15,000. By 1800 it had dwindled to 2,000. A similar fate befell some other Native groups, such as the Haida in the southeastern panhandle of Alaska.
July 16 thru August 20, 1741, Danish explorer Vitus Bering and Chirikov, who was working for Russia, landed a small party on an island near Prince William Sound, thus discovering Alaska. Alaska.
June 15, 1752, Benjamin Franklin flew a kite during a storm in Philadelphia to demonstrate the relationship between electricity and lightning.
February 10, 1763, The Treaty of Paris was signed, ending territorial conflicts between France and Britain in the Seven Years' War, the North American phase of which was called the French and Indian War.
March 22, 1765, The British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, inflaming relations with the American colonies.
October 7, 1765, the Stamp Act Congress convened in New York City to frame resolutions of “rights and grievances” of the American colonies.
November 1, 1765, The Stamp Act went into effect, marking the first British parliamentary attempt to raise revenue through direct taxation of all colonial commercial and legal papers.
November 23, 1765, the British Stamp Act received its first repudiation from jurists in the Frederick County Court House in Frederick, Maryland.
March 18, 1766, The British Parliament repealed the Stamp Act of 1765 after violent protests from American colonists.
March 5, 1770, Harassed by a mob, British troops on this day in 1770 opened fire, killing Crispus Attucks and four others in the Boston Massacre, an event that galvanized anti-British feelings in the lead-up to the American Revolution.
June 10, 1772, Rhode Islanders in the American colonies boarded and sank the British revenue cutter Gaspee in Narragansett Bay.
March 23, 1775, Patrick Henry, a major figure of the American Revolution, delivered the well-known speech featuring the phrase “give me liberty or give me death” at the second Virginia Convention at St. John's Church, Richmond.
April 18, 1775, Paul Revere, a renowned silversmith, is better remembered as a folk hero of the American Revolution who this night in 1775 made a dramatic ride on horseback to warn Boston-area residents of an imminent British attack.
April 19, 1775, Launched this day in 1775 with the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the American Revolution was an effort by 13 British colonies in North America (with help from France, Spain, and the Netherlands) to win their independence.
June 15, 1775 George Washington was named commander in chief of the colonies by the Continental Congress.
July 26, 1775, the U.S. Postal Service was established by the Second Continental Congress, and Benjamin Franklin was named the first postmaster general.
October 13, 1775, the Second Continental Congress established the Continental Navy to aid the Continental Army during the American Revolution.
February 27, 1776, at the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge, North Carolinian revolutionaries defeated loyalists during the American Revolution.
March 17, 1776, British General William Howe evacuated Boston after a successful siege by American revolutionaries led by General George Washington.
June 12, 1776, the constitutional convention of the colony of Virginia adopted the Virginia Declaration of Rights, a model for the Bill of Rights later added to the U.S. Constitution.
July 2, 1776, after a dramatic all-night ride, Delaware delegate Caesar Rodney arrived just in time to cast the decisive vote approving the Declaration of Independence.
July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence, adopted by the Second Continental Congress, called for the American colonies to secede from Great Britain, a proclamation now commemorated as a U.S. national holiday.
December 25, 1776, during the American Revolution, General George Washington crossed the Delaware River and surprised the British at Trenton, New Jersey.
June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress approved the Stars and Stripes as the first national flag of the United States.
December 19, 1777, during the American Revolution, General George Washington led 11,000 regulars to take up winter quarters at Valley Forge on the west bank of the Schuylkill River, 22 miles (35 km) northwest of Philadelphia.
1778, Captain James Cook made his famous voyage to Alaska and drew detailed maps of the area, naming such landmarks as Mount St. Augustine, Montague Island, Prince William Sound, Turnagain Arm and Cape Elizabeth.
November 11, 1778, During the American Revolution, Iroquois Indians, in direct retaliation for colonial assaults on two Indian villages, attacked a New York frontier settlement in the Cherry Valley Raid. [2]
February 14, 1779, Captain James Cook was killed by Hawaiians in a dispute over the theft of a cutter.
March 15, 1781, American revolutionaries won a strategic victory over the British at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in North Carolina.
October 19, 1781, On this day, Britain's Lord Cornwallis surrendered to General George Washington, commander of the American army, at Yorktown, Virginia, effectively ending the American Revolution and assuring America's independence.
August 7, 1782, George Washington ordered the creation of the first U.S. military decoration, the Badge of Military Merit (today called the Purple Heart), which was later awarded to three Revolutionary War soldiers for bravery in action.
The first permanent Russian settlement was established on Kodiak Island in 1783, and for the next 50 years, Russia explored and colonized the area.
There were notable cases of harmony between Natives and newcomers. Contacts with outsiders, at least temporarily, actually enriched the indigenous cultures. On the Southeast coast, for example, the ready availability of iron tools encouraged an expansion of Native woodworking traditions. New wealth created by the fur trade made more frequent and lavish ceremonial feasts, or potlatches, possible.
December 23,1783, before the Continental Congress, George Washington resigned as commander in chief of the Continental Army.
But the sometimes violent struggle for control of the region led inevitably to European dominance. Some Russian Orthodox priests and Anglo-American missionaries made sincere, though sometimes misguided, efforts to protect and educate the Natives. Yet in Russian America, as in the Canadian and American West, the commercial drive usually won out. A favorite saying of the rough-and-ready promyshlenniki (Russian fur traders} could just as easily describe the unrestrained conduct of many of Alaska's other foreign visitors: "God is in his heaven, and the Cesar is far away."
In 1785 a consortium of traders based in London formed a business called The King George's Sound Company to establish a fur trade route between the Pacific Northwest and China. As a start they purchased 2 vessels, the King George of 320 tons and the smaller Queen Charlotte, of 220 tons. Nathaniel Portlock who had sailed with Capt. James Cook on his 3rd and last voyage to the Pacific in 1779, was chosen as Captain of the King George, and George Dixon who had sailed on the same voyage with Cook as an armorer, was chosen to command the Queen Charlotte. The 2 ships sailed from England in September of 1785, reaching the Pacific Northwest in July of 1786, where they anchored at Cook's Inlet in Alaska and found a Russian settlement. That summer they traded in furs with the Indians until November when they sailed to Hawaii for the winter months, returning to Alaska the following March 1787 where they anchored off Montague Island, Prince William Sound near Snug Corner Cove. After trading up and down the coast they encountered Capt. John Meares in his ship the “Nootka”, but warned him off the coast as he didn't have a South Seas trading permit, and Portlock and Meares developed a natural antipathy for each other. Nevertheless, Portlock, Dixon and Meares all continued their surveying and fur trading along the Alaskan coast and all 3 independently sailed to China with their cargoes of furs. In addition all three Captains published accounts of their voyages after their return to England. (Ref. “Beyond the Capes” by Ernest S. Dodge & “The Admiralty Chart” by Rear-Admiral G. S. Richie, D.S.C.)
December 7, 1787, Delaware became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
December 18, 1787, New Jersey became the third state admitted to the United States when it ratified the U.S. Constitution.
May 28, 1788, the Federalist papers—a series of 85 essays on the proposed new U.S. Constitution and on the nature of republican government, written in 1787–88 by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay—were published in book form.
February 4, 1789, George Washington was elected to serve as the first U.S. president by a unanimous vote in the first electoral college.
March 4, 1789, The U.S. Constitution went into effect as the governing law of the United States, the date having been established by Congress.
April 30, 1789, George Washington, the first president of the United States, was inaugurated in Federal Hall in New York City, addressing his constituency on “the proceedings of a new and free government.”
May 31, 1790, the United States established copyright law.
July 16, 1790, Washington, D.C., was established by Congress as the capital of the United States.
August 4, 1790, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton established the Revenue Marine Service, which became the U.S. Coast Guard.
October 13, 1792, the cornerstone for the White House, the official office and home of every U.S. president and first lady since 1800 (when John and Abigail Adams moved in near the end of his term), was laid this day in 1792.
October 21, 1797, One of the first frigates built for the U.S. Navy, the Constitution (byname Old Ironsides), was launched in Boston.
April 27, 1791, Samuel F.B. Morse, an American painter and the inventor of an electric telegraph and the Morse Code, was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts.
October 27, 1795, Pinckney's Treaty, an agreement between the United States and Spain, was signed, giving the United States navigation rights on the Mississippi River.
December 14, 1799, George Washington, the first president of the United States of America, died at Mount Vernon in Virginia.
March 16, 1802, the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York—one of the oldest service academies in the world—was originally founded as a training centre for the U.S. Corps of Engineers.
October 20, 1803, the U.S. Senate, after due consideration and considerable oratory, ratified the Louisiana Purchase.
March 23, 1806, Having completed the first U.S. overland expedition to the Pacific coast, explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark this day in 1806 began their return to St. Louis, Missouri, where their journey had begun in May 1804.
February 12, 1809, Born this day, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th U.S. president (1861–65), preserved the Union during the American Civil War, brought about the emancipation of slaves, and was an eloquent spokesman for democracy.
June 18, 1812, U.S. President James Madison signed a declaration of war against Great Britain, initiating the War of 1812 , which arose chiefly from U.S. grievances over oppressive maritime practices during the Napoleonic Wars.
August 19, 1812, The USS Constitution, commanded by Captain Isaac Hull, won a brilliant victory over the British frigate Guerrière in the War of 1812.
October 5, 1813, during the “War of 1812,” a British army with some 1,000 Indian allies under the famed leader Tecumseh was defeated by U.S. troops in the Battle of the Thames in what is now Ontario, Canada.
November 11, 1813, British troops under Colonel J.W. Morrison defeated U.S. forces led by General John Boyd at the Battle of Crysler's Farm during the War of 1812. [2]
December 24, 1814, the United States and Great Britain signed the Treaty of Ghent in Belgium, ending the War of 1812, marking a decline of American dependence on Europe, and stimulating a sense of U.S. nationalism.
December 3, 1818, Illinois was admitted as the 21st state of the United States of America.
May 29, 1830, the Indian Removal Act was passed, allowing U.S. President Andrew Jackson to grant American Indian tribes unsettled western prairie land in exchange for their settlements within the borders of extant U.S. states, thereby clearing the way for further white settlement.
February 23, 1836, during the Texas war for independence, Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna began a siege of the Alamo, which was captured after 13 days and which became for Texans a symbol of heroic resistance.
March 6, 1836, The Alamo in Texas fell to Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna after a 13-day siege.
April 21, 1836, General Sam Houston led 800 Texans to victory over a Mexican army of 1,500 under General Antonio López de Santa Anna in the Battle of San Jacinto, ensuring the Texans' independence from Mexico.
October 22, 1836, Sam Houston was inaugurated as the first president of the Republic of Texas.
June 15, 1844, Charles Goodyear received a patent for the process of rubber vulcanization.
October 10, 1845, to improve the then-unsatisfactory methods of instructing midshipmen, George Bancroft—historian, educator, and secretary of the navy—founded the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, on this day. [2]
June 15, 1846, The United States and Britain signed the Oregon Treaty, establishing the border between Canada and the United States at latitude 49° N.
June 19, 1846, Alexander Joy Cartwright arranged a baseball game between the New York Knickerbockers and the New York Nine at Hoboken, New Jersey—the first baseball game to use the set of rules on which today's game is based.
August 10, 1846, the Smithsonian Institution was founded in Washington, D.C., by the U.S. Congress with funds bequeathed by English scientist James Smithson.
February 11, 1847, American inventor Thomas Edison, who, singly or jointly, held a world record of 1,093 patents and who played a critical role in introducing the modern age of electricity, was born.
February 22, 1847, U.S. General Zachary Taylor led troops against a Mexican force commanded by General Antonio López de Santa Anna at the Battle of Buena Vista.
June 10, 1847, the Chicago Tribune, one of the leading daily American newspapers and long the dominant, sometimes strident, voice of the Midwest, began publication.
August 19, 1847, U.S. forces under Major General Winfield Scott began the Battle of Contreras, opening the final campaign of the Mexican War.
May 29, 1848, Wisconsin became the 30th state of the Union.
March 7, 1850, U.S. Senator Daniel Webster spoke out in favour of the Compromise of 1850 (enacted in September), a series of moderate measures that addressed the question of slavery in U.S. territories.
August 12, 1851, Isaac Merrit Singer patented his sewing machine and formed I.M. Singer & Company to market the product.
October 18, 1854, the Ostend Manifesto was declared, by which three U.S. diplomats communicating to Secretary of State William L. Marcy advocated U.S. seizure of Cuba from Spain.
May 30, 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed, providing for the territorial organization of Kansas and Nebraska under the principle of popular sovereignty.
March 6, 1857, U.S. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney announced the Dred Scott decision, making slavery legal in all U.S. territories.
October 27, 1858, Theodore Roosevelt, born this day, was a writer and soldier, received the Nobel Prize for Peace, and, as the 26th U.S. president (1901–09), greatly expanded the powers of the presidency and federal government.
1859, De Stoeckl returns to United States from St. Petersburg with authority to negotiate the sale of Alaska.
April 3, 1860, The Pony Express mail delivery system, which used continuous horse-and-rider relays along a 1,800-mile (2,900-km) route between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, was launched in the United States.
November 6, 1860, Americans elected as their president Abraham Lincoln, whose victory led to the secession of Southern states and the long and bloody Civil War that lasted until 1865 and ended slavery in the U.S.
December 20, 1860, following Abraham Lincoln's election as U.S. president, South Carolina became the first U.S. state to secede from the Union.
February 18, 1861, Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as provisional president of the Confederate States of America.
April 12, 1861, Fort Sumter, one of the few military installations in the South still in Federal hands, came under fire from Confederate guns in Charleston, South Carolina, thus initiating the American Civil War.
July 21, 1861, the First Battle of Bull Run (called First Manassas by the South) was fought during the American Civil War.
October 24, 1861, the first transcontinental telegram was sent via the telegraph in the United States, effectively bringing to an end the Pony Express.
March 9, 1862, The Battle of the Monitor and Merrimack, a duel between ironclads during the American Civil War, marked the beginning of a new era of naval warfare.
July 17, 1862, Abraham Lincoln's wartime Congress passed the second Confiscation Act, a precursor to the Emancipation Proclamation.
July 1, 1863, the Battle of Gettysburg, one of the most important battles of the American Civil War, began.
July 3, 1863, following three days of intense fighting—casualties numbered more than 40,000—the Battle of Gettysburg ended with a victory for the Union forces and was seen as a turning point in the American Civil War.
March 10, 1864, the Red River Campaign began in the American Civil War.
August 5, 1864, during the Battle of Mobile Bay, Union Admiral David Farragut sealed off the port of Mobile, Alabama, from Confederate blockade runners.
October 31, 1864, Nevada became the 36th state of the United States.
March 2, 1865, Confederate forces under General Jubal A. Early suffered a decisive defeat that ended Southern resistance in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, during the American Civil War, and the Confederacy collapsed the following month.
April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia of the Confederate States of America, signed a treaty of surrender at Appomattox Court House, ending the American Civil War.
April 14, 1865, just after the American Civil War ended, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth while attending a production at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., and died the next morning.
April 26, 1865, Twelve days after assassinating U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth was killed at a Virginia farm either by a Federal soldier or by his own hand.
July 2 1865,, in London's East End, William Booth founded the ministry later called the Salvation Army.
December 18, 1865, by proclamation of the U.S. secretary of state, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, outlawing slavery, officially entered into force, having been ratified by the requisite states on December 6, 1865.
1865, Western Union Telegraph Company prepares to put telegraph line across Alaska and Siberia.
1866, Secretary of State William H. Seward offered to buy the land for $7.2 million - less than 2 cents per acre.
1867, The United States purchases Alaska from Russia.
1867, Pribilof Islands placed under jurisdiction of Secretary of Treasury.
1867, Born June 8 was architect Frank Lloyd Wright, whose Prairie style became the basis of 20th-century residential design in the U.S. and who was known as the most abundantly creative genius of American architecture.
March 30, 1867, William H. Seward, secretary of state under U.S. President Andrew Johnson, signed the Alaska Purchase, a treaty ceding Russian North America to the United States for a price—$7.2 million—that amounted to about two cents per acre.
October 18, 1867, though many called it *Sewards Folly* and *Sewards Icebox*, the Stars and Stripes flew for the first time on Alaska soil. Thus, the U.S. had acquired more than half a millon square miles of new territory and responsibility for seeing to the needs of a new population: 483 whites and some 27,500 Alaska natives.
October 18, 1867, After much opposition, a deal negotiated by U.S. Secretary of State William Seward for the U.S. purchase of the Russian colony of Alaska was approved, and on this day in 1867 the U.S. flag was flown over the capital, Sitka.
1868, Alaska designated as the Department of Alaska under Brevet Major General Jeff C. Davis, U.S. Army.
February 24, 1868, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 126–47 to impeach President Andrew Johnson, whose lenient Reconstruction policies regarding the South after the Civil War angered Radical Republicans in Congress.
1869, The Sitka Times, first newspaper in Alaska, was published.
October 8, 1871, the city of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, burned to the ground in hours, killing 1,152 people. At the same time, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed 4 square miles (10 square km) of Chicago, killing 250 and leaving 90,000 homeless. [2]
March 1, 1872, Yellowstone National Park, situated in the western United States and designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1978, was established by the U.S. Congress as the country's—and the world's—first national park.
June 25, 1876, George Armstrong Custer made his last stand with the 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
1877, U.S. troops withdrawn from Alaska.
March 7, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for the telephone.
August 12,1877, American inventor Thomas Alva Edison made perhaps his most original discovery, the phonograph, and his early recordings were indentations embossed into a sheet of tinfoil by a vibrating stylus.
October 5, 1877, A small band of Nez Percé warriors, under the leadership of Chief Joseph, surrendered to General Nelson A. Miles after holding off U.S. forces that had tracked them through Idaho, Yellowstone Park, and Montana.
February 19, 1878, American inventor Thomas Edison patented the phonograph.
July 2, 1881, U.S. President James A. Garfield was shot. He died several weeks later on September 19, 1881.
1881, Two prospectors discovered a mountain of low-grade gold ore near Juneau.
February 21, 1885, the Washington Monument was dedicated on the grounds of the Mall in Washington, D.C.
October 28, 1886, the Statue of Liberty, a gift from the people of France to the people of the United States on the occasion of America's 100th anniversary in 1876, was officially dedicated this day in 1886 by U.S. President Grover Cleveland.
1882, U.S. Navy bombs, burn Tlingit village of Angoon.
October 11, 1884, born this day, was a United Nations diplomat, a humanitarian, the wife (and distant cousin) of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and, in her time, one of the world's most widely admired women.
October 9, 1888, built between 1848 and 1884 and dedicated in 1885, the Washington Monument—a marble-faced granite obelisk that honours the first U.S. president, George Washington—opened to the public in Washington, D.C. [2]
November 6, 1888, Benjamin Harrison was elected U.S. president by an electoral majority despite losing the popular vote by more than 90,000 to his opponent, Grover Cleveland.
April 20, 1889, born this day in Austria, Adolf Hitler became leader of the Nazi Party in 1920 and chancellor of Germany in 1933, created a formidable war machine, provoked World War II, and orchestrated the Holocaust.
May 31, 1889, considered one of the worst natural disasters in American history, a flood ravaged Johnstown, Pennsylvania, causing more than 2,200 deaths.
November 2, 1889, North Dakota was admitted to the union as the 39th U.S. state and South Dakota as the 40th.
November 11, 1889, Washington was admitted to the union as the 42nd U.S. state. [2]
October 11, 1890, The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) was organized. [2]
October 14, 1890, Dwight D. Eisenhower, born this day in 1890, served as Supreme Allied Commander in western Europe during World War II, overseeing the Normandy Invasion in June 1944, and was elected to two terms (1953–61) as U.S. president.
June 28, 1894, The U.S. Congress declared the first Monday of September as Labor Day, a holiday to honour the American worker.
August 17, 1896, George Washington Carmack unearthed gold in Bonanza Creek, a tributary of the Klondike River in the Yukon Territory, Canada, setting off a gold rush into the Klondike valley.
1897-1900, The Klondike Gold Rush: Gold was also discovered at Cape Nome on the Seward Peninsula and one of history's biggest gold rushes was on. An estimated quarter of a million people started north for the *diggins*.
February 15, 1898, On this day, an explosion in Havana harbour sank the battleship USS Maine, killing 260 American seamen and precipitating the Spanish-American War, which originated in the Cuban struggle for independence from Spain.
April 24, 1898, Spain declared war on the United States.
May 1, 1898, the Battle of Manila Bay ended in the defeat of the Spanish Pacific fleet by the U.S. Navy, resulting in the fall of the Philippines and contributing to the final U.S. victory in the Spanish-American War.
July 7, 1898, the U.S. Congress annexed Hawaii through a joint resolution signed by President William McKinley, paving the way for the islands to become a territory (1900) and later a U.S. state (1959).
August 12, 1898, the Republic of Hawaii was annexed as part of the United States.
August 13, 1898, the U.S. Army took control of the Philippine port of Manila during the Spanish-American War.
October 12, 1898, A landmark in labour union history, a coal-mine riot took place in Virden, Illinois, when strikebreakers were brought in. [2]
October 18, 1898, Puerto Rico was turned over to the United States following the Spanish-American War.
April 28, 1901, Japanese Emperor Hirohito, who was born in Tokyo, ruled his country from 1926 to 1989, a reign that included both Japan's military defeat in World War II and its postwar economic triumphs.
September 6, 1901, assassinated Republican William McKinley, the 25th president of the United States (1897–1901), was shot this day in 1901 by Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist, at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, and died eight days later.
October 29, 1901, Anarchist Leon Czolgosz was executed for the assassination of U.S. President William McKinley.
June 28, 1902, notorious American bank robber John Dillinger was born in Indianapolis, Indiana.
June 15, 1903, American automobile-racing driver Barney Oldfield accomplished the first mile-a-minute performance in a car at Indianapolis, Indiana.
March 17, 1905, Eleanor Roosevelt, niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, married her distant cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt, later U.S. president.
June 30, 1908, an enormous aerial explosion, presumably caused by a comet fragment colliding with Earth, flattened approximately 2,000 square km (500,000 acres) of pine forest near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in central Siberia.
April 6, 1909, American explorer Robert Edwin Peary led the first expedition to the North Pole.
July 27, 1909, the world's first military airplane completed one of the final qualifying flights for its sale to the U.S. Army Signal Corps by Wilbur and Orville Wright.
May 30, 1911, the first Indianapolis 500 automobile race was run in Indianapolis, Indiana.
1912, The Territorial status for Alaska provides for Legislature; Alaska Native Brotherhood organizes in Southeast; Mount Katmai explodes forming the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.
1913, The First Alaska Territorial Legislature convenes.
June 28, 1914, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his consort, Sophie, were assassinated by Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo, Bosnia, precipitating the outbreak of World War I.
July 28, 1914, using the assassination of the Austrian archduke Francis Ferdinand as a pretext to present Serbia with an unacceptable ultimatum, Austria-Hungary declared war on the Slavic country, sparking World War I.
August 10, 1914, France declared war on Austria-Hungary in World War I.
April 22, 1915, During World War I, German forces introduced the systematized use of chemical warfare when they released chlorine gas along a 4-mile (6-km) front at the Second Battle of Ypres.
1916: On July 1, Coca-Cola introduced its famous contoured bottle, which was not registered until 1960, to distinguish the soft drink now known as Coca-Cola classic from imitators.
1916, The first bill for Alaska statehood introduced in Congress. Alaskans vote in favor of prohibition by a 2 to 1 margin.
February 21, 1916, the Battle of Verdun, one of the most devastating engagements of World War I, began.
March 9, 1916, Pancho Villa's men killed more than a dozen in a raid on Columbus, New Mexico.
April 2, 1917, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany.
May 31, 1916, the Battle of Jutland, an encounter between British and German naval fleets in World War I, began.
May 29, 1917, John F. Kennedy was born. He became the 35th United States president, faced several foreign crises, most notably in Cuba and Berlin, and secured such achievements as the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty before being assassinated in 1963.
June 27, 1917, during World War I, Greece declared war on the Central Powers.
April 21, 1918, Manfred, Freiherr (baron) von Richthofen, Germany's top flying ace in World War I, was shot down and killed during a battle near Amiens, France.
October 8, 1918, Corporal Alvin Cullum York single-handedly captured 132 Germans and killed another 25 during the Meuse-Argonne offensive of World War I. [2]
November 11, 1918, At 5:00 AM the Allied powers and Germany signed an armistice document in the railway carriage of Ferdinand Foch, the commander of the Allied armies, and six hours later World War I came to an end.[2]
June 28, 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was signed at the Palace of Versailles in France, signifying the end of World War I.
October 28, 1919, the U.S. Congress overrode President Woodrow Wilson's veto and passed the Volstead Act, providing enforcement guidelines for Prohibition.
November 11, 1921, the anniversary of the end of World War I, the first Armistice Day was commemorated with the burial of the bodies of unknown soldiers in tombs in Paris, in London, and outside Washington, D.C. [2]
May 30, 1922, the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C.
1923, President Warren E. Harding comes to Alaska to drive the last spike in Alaska Railroad. He died in San Francisco on his return trip to Washington D.C.
1924, Congress extends citizenship to all Indians in the United States, Tlingit William Paul, Sr. is first Native elected to Alaska Legislature.
1927, the Alaska Territorial Flag was designed by Benny Benson.
June 11, 1927, American aviator Charles A. Lindbergh was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross by U.S. President Calvin Coolidge.
June 12, 1929, Anne Frank—a young Jewish girl whose diary of her family's two years in hiding during the German occupation of The Netherlands became a classic of war literature—was born this day in 1929 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
October 24, 1929, a record 12,894,650 shares of stock were traded, causing the first day of real panic in the Crash of 1929, known as “Black Thursday.”
October 29, 1929, Just five days after nearly 13 million shares of U.S. stock were sold in one day in 1929, an additional 16 million shares were sold this day, called “Black Tuesday,” further fueling the crisis known as the Great Depression.
November 29, 1929, American pioneer aviator Richard E. Byrd flew over the South Pole.
1931, The Alaska State Capitol, located in Juneau, was originally constructed in 1931 as the Federal and Territorial Building. When Alaska became a state in 1959, the building became property of the state. Juneau is the only capitol city in the U.S. that is only accessible by boat or plane.
March 3, 1931, "The Star-Spangled Banner," written by Francis Scott Key during the War of 1812, was officially adopted as the national anthem of the United States by act of Congress.
February 22, 1932, the Purple Heart, a U.S. military decoration originally instituted by George Washington in 1782 to honour bravery in battle, was revived as an award for those wounded or killed in action against an enemy.
July 2, 1932, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt coined the term “New Deal” in his acceptance speech for the Democratic presidential nomination.
March 4, 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated as the 32nd U.S. president, and later he led the country out of the Depression and to victory in World War II.
March 10, 1933, soon after Adolf Hitler became chancellor, the first concentration camp in Germany opened at Dachau, where at least 32,000 people would die from disease, malnutrition, physical oppression, and execution.
June 19, 1934, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was organized in the United States.
August 15, 1935, American entertainers Will Rogers and Wiley Post were killed in a plane crash near Point Barrow, Alaska.
November 23, 1935, Lincoln Ellsworth landed on Ellsworth Land, Antarctica, and claimed it for the United States, a claim the U.S. government has never taken up.
October 25, 1936, Germany and Italy established the Rome-Berlin Axis.
April 28, 1937, Saddam Hussein, who as president of Iraq (1979–2003) angered and outraged the international community with invasions of neighbouring Iran and Kuwait and who was unseated by the United States, was born.
1939, Alaska Governer Ernest Gruening began to form an Alaska National Guard (AKNG). The federal government allocated four companies of infantry, a medical detachment, a headquarters element and the 129th Observation Squadron to the newly created Alaska National Guard. The 129th Observation Squadron, which would have given the Territory of Alaska an Air National Guard right from the start, never materialized and the Air National Guard had to wait until after World War II for a physical begining.
April 30, 1939, The National Broadcasting Company made the first public television broadcast in the United States, at the New York World's Fair.
1940, Fort Richardson established; construction begins on Elmendorf Air Force Base.
June 9, 1940, German tank forces under Major General Erwin Rommel crossed the Seine River in a push to the Atlantic coast of France during World War II.
June 10, 1940, Italy declared war against France and Great Britain, entering World War II.
June 14, 1940, the first transport of Polish political prisoners arrived at Auschwitz, which became Nazi Germany's largest concentration, extermination, and slave-labour camp, where more than one million people died.
June 18, 1940, broadcasting from London after France fell to the Nazis, French General Charles de Gaulle appealed to his compatriots to continue World War II under his leadership.
October 24, 1940, the 40-hour workweek went into effect under the U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.
November 5, 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to an unprecedented third term as president of the United States.
April 13, 1941, Japan concluded a neutrality pact with the Soviet Union in World War II.
November 26, 1941, U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull sent a harsh notice to Japan, calling for a full withdrawal from China and Indochina.
December 7, 1941, Japanese bombers launched a surprise aerial attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, precipitating the entry of the United States into World War II.
December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. 1Lt Ken Taylor Sr. a P-51 pilot from Wheeler Field was accreded with 4 kills and would later become BG Ken Taylor, Air Commander of the Alaska Air National Guard.
1941, troops raised in Alaska were sent out of the territory for active duty on other fronts. Territorial Governor Ernest Gruening quickly moved to form the Alaska Territorial Guard to protect Alaska.
December 23, 1941, early in World War II, invading Japanese forces defeated U.S. troops at the Battle of Wake Island.
1942, Japan bombs Dutch harbor; invades Aleutians.
February 19, 1942, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the executive order allowing the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
February 28, 1942, During World War II, Japanese troops landed on the island of Java, which they occupied until 1945.
March 8, 1942, Japanese troops captured Rangoon, Burma (Yangôn, Myanmar) during World War II.
March 11, 1942, during World War II, Allied forces in the Southwest Pacific Theatre came under the command of U.S. General Douglas MacArthur following his tour on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines.
May 30,1942, during World War II the British Royal Air Force dispatched more than 1,000 bombers against Cologne, Germany.
June 9, 1942, On this day the residents of the village of Lidice (now in the Czech Republic) were rounded up, most to be massacred the next day in reprisal for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, deputy leader of the Nazi paramilitary group SS , by Czech underground fighters.
July 30, 1942, Frank Sinatra sang with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra in his last recording before venturing on a solo career. ref. Encyclopædia Britannica
August 2, 1942, PT-109, a U.S. Navy torpedo boat under John F. Kennedy's command, was sunk by a Japanese destroyer.
August 7, 1942, in the Allies' first major offensive in the Pacific theatre during World War II, U.S. Marines landed on Guadalcanal and captured the airfield from Japan, sparking a battle that lasted some six months.
April 13, 1943, The Thomas Jefferson Memorial was dedicated in East Potomac Park on the south bank of the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C.
April 19, 1943, The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, an act of resistance by Polish Jews under Nazi occupation, began this day and was quelled four weeks later, on May 16.
June 25, 1943, the Smith-Connally Anti-Strike Act was enacted by the U.S. Congress, giving the president power to seize and operate privately owned war plants when a strike or threat of a strike interfered with war production.
July 22, 1943, led by U.S. General George S. Patton, Allied forces took Palermo, on the northwest corner of Sicily, giving them a strategic foothold from which to invade mainland Italy during World War II.
December 24, 1943, General Dwight D. Eisenhower was appointed supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force during World War II.
July 18, 1944, Allied forces captured the French town of Saint-Lô, a vital communications centre, during World War II.
July 20, 1944, during World War II, German military leaders attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler in the July Plot.
June 18, 1944, during World War II, U.S. Marines attacked Saipan in the Mariana Islands.
November 6, 1944, Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Thomas E. Dewey and was elected to an unprecedented fourth term as president of the United States.
February 11, 1945, The Yalta Conference between the Allied leaders of World War II came to a close.
March 16, 1945, U.S. Marines captured the Japanese island of Iwo Jima during World War II.
April 18, 1945, During the U.S. invasion of the Japanese island of Okinawa in World War II, American war correspondent Ernie Pyle was killed on nearby Ie Island by Japanese gunfire.
April 29, 1945, the U.S. Seventh Army liberated tens of thousands of inmates at the Nazi concentration camp in Dachau, Germany.
April 30, 1945, German dictator Adolf Hitler and his wife committed suicide in a bunker in Berlin.
July 16, 1945, the United States tested the first atomic bomb this day in 1945 near Alamogordo, New Mexico, and the following month dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, hastening the end of World War II.
February 16, 1945, American paratroopers landed on Corregidor Island in the Philippines during World War II, and within two weeks they recaptured it from the Japanese.
February 19, 1945, On this day, during the final phases of World War II, U.S. Marines invaded Iwo Jima so as to wrest control of the strategically important island from the Japanese, who put up fierce resistance in the ensuing battle.
February 23, 1945, Six U.S. servicemen raised the American flag over Mount Suribachi on the island of Iwo Jima during World War II.
April 1, 1945, U.S. troops landed on the Japanese island of Okinawa during World War II.
July 17, 1945, Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Harry S. Truman met at the Potsdam Conference, the last Allied summit conference of World War II.
August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan—the blast killed more than 70,000 people and destroyed most of the city—in an effort to hasten the end of World War II.
August 9, 1945, the second atomic bomb dropped on Japan by the United States in World War II struck the city of Nagasaki.
August 19, 1945, A commando force formed by Vo Nguyen Giap, under Vietnamese nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh, entered the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi.
October 24, 1945, the charter for the United Nations—the world's premier international organization, established at the end of World War II to maintain world peace and friendly relations among nations—entered into force this day in 1945.
March 5, 1946, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill popularized the term “Iron Curtain”—describing the separation between Soviet and Western nations—in a speech at Fulton, Missouri.
April 3,1946, The Japanese army general Homma Masaharu was executed for forcing the Bataan Death March.
October 26, 1947, Hillary Rodham Clinton, born this day in 1947, served as American first lady during the presidency of Bill Clinton and became the first first lady to win elective office when she was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2000.
June 25, 1950, the Korean War began when North Korea unleashed an attack southward across the 38th parallel, after which the UN Security Council (minus the Soviet delegate) passed a resolution calling on UN members to assist South Korea.
July 8, 1950, Douglas MacArthur was appointed commander of United Nations forces in the Korean War.
October 25, 1950, China entered the Korean War on the side of North Korea against South Korea and the United Nations (UN), the United States being the UN's principal participant.
November 1, 1950, Puerto Rican nationalists, members of the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN), attempted to assassinate U.S. President Harry S. Truman.
1951, Following the war, Lars Johnson returned to Alaska and in 1951 was appointed Adjutant General (AG) at the age of 33 - the youngest AG in the nation. He took over a tiny struggling Army National Guard organization which had never held an annual training camp. He began to transform it into an efficient fighting force. He needed an Air National Guard and fought to establish a unit in Anchorage. He was assisted by another officer in Juneau, Lee Lucas.
March 14, 1951, United Nations forces recaptured Seoul during the Korean War.
March 29, 1951, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were found guilty of espionage and sentenced to death for turning over U.S. military secrets to the Soviet Union.
April 11, 1951, U.S. President Harry S. Truman relieved General Douglas MacArthur of his command of United Nations and U.S. forces during the Korean War.
1952, Johnson talked General Kepner of the Alaska Command into supporting an Air National Guard Unit. Johnson and Lucas made many trips to National Guard Bureau in Washington D.C. to build support for a unit in the face of almost over-whelming odds, but they got the backing of the Bureau and now only needed men and money to make the dream a reality.
February 26, 1951, American novelist James Jones published From Here to Eternity, about the U.S. Army in Hawaii before the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
September 19, 1952, the Alaska Air National Guard is established as the 8144th Air Base Squadron at Elmendorf AFB.
1952, The U.S. Air Force was now wearing the new blue uniform. The final date for transition to the new blue uniform was July 1952. However, the Quonset Hut photograph taken in 1952 shows the new Alaska Air National Guard members wearing the transition uniform not the new uniform. To date I have not found historical data that would link the Alaska Air National Guard to the wearing of the new uniforms.
November 1, 1952, On this day in 1952 on an atoll of the Marshall Islands, Edward Teller and other American scientists tested the first thermonuclear bomb, its power resulting from an uncontrolled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.
February 1953 the Alaska Air National Guard received their first aircraft a North American T-6G Texan Observation/Trainer Tail Number 43555 at Hangar 3 on Elmendorf Air Force Base, Anchorage, Alaska. Aircraft 43555 would be the Alaska Air National Guards only aircraft for the next six months. Soon, five more North American T-6G Texan trainers arrived, operating out of Elmendorf AFB. In keeping with the Air Guard's mission to provide national air defense, the pilots began training in earnest for their planned transition to jet fighters. As that training progressed, the unit was re-designated the 144th Fighter-Bomber Squadron in July 1953.
June 19, 1953, after the failure of court appeals and of a worldwide campaign for mercy, husband and wife Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were put to death, becoming the first American civilians to be executed for espionage.
July 1, 1953 the 8144th Air Base Squadron received federal recognition and was redesignated the 144th Fighter Bomber Squadron. The "8" in 8144th appears to be a number that signified a United States Air Force unit had applied for federal recognition. Therefore the "8" was dropped upon recognition. Planning begins to construct the Air National Guard Base at the newly constructed and opened Anchorage Airport in South Anchorage.
July 27, 1953, the armistice agreement ending the Korean War was signed at P'anmunjom in central Korea.
October 1953, the first T-33A assigned to the Alaska Air National Guard arrived at Elmendorf Air Force Base, Anchorage, Alaska. The T-33A aircraft would be flown by the Alaska Air National Guard as a fighter-trainer from October 1953 through July 1957. TheT-33A trainer was shortly followed by F-80C "Shooting Star" jet fighters. By late Fall of 1954, the growing unit was fully equipped with 14 F-80Cs, two T-33As, three T-6G trainers, two T-6G observation planes and a C-47A "Gooney Bird" transport.
1954: In February of 1954 the Alaska Air National Guard received its first F-80C Shooting Star. The Alaska Air National Guard would fly this aircraft from February 1954 through June 1955. On November 16, 1954 1st Lt. Kulis would become the first member of the Alaska Air National Guard to die in the line of duty when his F-80C Shooting Star crashed near Goose Bay, Alaska on the north side of Cook Inlet.
June 14, 1954 Anchorage Airport Air National Guard Base ground breaking ceremony (cutting down trees).
July 21, 1954, the Geneva Accords effectively divided Vietnam at the 17th parallel.
1954, During the Summer of (date needed) 1954 an Alaska Air National Guard F-80C Shooting Star, tail number ?????, piloted by Lt Yeatts Jr. becomes the first "jet aircraft" to takeoff from Merrill Field in Anchorage, Alaska.
November 16, 1954 1st Lt. Albert Kulis would become the first member of the Alaska Air National Guard to die in the line of duty when his F-80C Shooting Star crashed near Goose Bay, Alaska on the north side of Cook Inlet from Anchorage. Anchorage Airport Air National Guard Base will be named Kulis Air National Guard Base on Memorial Day, May 23, 1955 in his memory.
Thirty minutes later a second Alaska Air National Guard aircraft crashed near Point McKenzie on the north side of the Cook Inlet from Anchorage. It was a T-33A piloted by 1st Lt Roger Pendelton with Capt Lionel Tietze in the instructor seat. 1st Lt Roger Pendelton would become the second Alaska Air National Guard member to die in the line of duty.
1955, Dedication of newly established Kulis Air National Guard Base at Anchorage International Airport.
July 11, 1955, the U.S. Air Force Academy officially opened at temporary quarters at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver, Colorado.
July 30, 1956, the phrase “In God we trust” legally became the national motto of the United States.
July 29, 1958 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration established - Criticized for allowing the Soviet Union to launch the first man-made satellite to orbit Earth (Sputnik 1, on October 4, 1957), U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation this day in 1958 that created NASA.
1958: On August 3, the atomic submarine Nautilus passed beneath the thick ice cap of the North Pole, an unprecedented feat.
October 11, 1958, the unmanned U.S. deep-space probe Pioneer 1 was launched into lunar orbit.
1959:January 3, 1959, Alaska officially became the 49th state of the union. The Alaska State Capitol, located in Juneau, was originally constructed in 1931 as the Federal and Territorial Building. When Alaska became a state in 1959, the building became property of the state. Juneau is the only capitol city in the U.S. that is only accessible by boat or plane.
October 26, 1958, America's first jet airliner, the Boeing 707, entered service for Pan American World Airways.
October 15, 1959, a final conference on the Antarctic Treaty convened in Washington D.C., and, after six weeks of negotiations, the treaty was signed by 12 countries, preserving the continent for free scientific study.
October 21, 1959, The Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, opened in New York City.
July 9, 1960, the Thresher, the first of a class of U.S. nuclear-powered attack submarines was launched. It sank in 1963 in the worst submarine accident in history.
August 19, 1960, Francis Gary Powers was sentenced to 10 years' confinement by the Soviet Union for espionage following the U-2 Affair, but he was later released (1962) in exchange for the Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.
November 8, 1960, John F. Kennedy was narrowly elected president of the United States.
April 17, 1961, Cuban leader Fidel Castro's forces repelled the Bay of Pigs invasion, which was led by recent Cuban exiles and financed by the U.S. government during the Cold War.
May 1, 1961, The first major airplane hijacking within the United States occurred when a man forced a commercial airliner en route from Miami to Key West, Florida, to detour to Cuba.
June 19, 1961, Great Britain recognized Kuwait's independence.
July 21,1961, Virgil I. (“Gus”) Grissom became the second American to enter space during Project Mercury.
October 27, 1961, the first Saturn rocket was successfully launched, and years later the Saturn V was the launch vehicle used in the Apollo moon-landing flights.
February 10, 1962, U.S. airman Francis Gary Powers, captured pilot of the U-2 plane downed by the Soviet Union in 1960, was exchanged for jailed Soviet informant Rudolf Abel.
February 20, 1962, John H. Glenn, Jr., the oldest of seven astronauts selected by NASA for Project Mercury spaceflight training (and later a U.S. senator), became the first American to orbit Earth, doing so three times.
May 31, 1962, the State of Israel hanged German official Adolf Eichmann, who had escaped from a prison camp in 1946 and spent some 14 years in hiding, for his part in the Nazi extermination of Jews during World War II.
July 10, 1962, Telstar 1, the first communications satellite to transmit live television signals and telephone conversations across the Atlantic Ocean, was launched, inaugurating a new age in electronic communications.
October 22, 1962, On this day in 1962, President John F. Kennedy alerted Americans to the Cuban missile crisis, declaring a naval blockade to prevent further missile shipments to the island country 90 miles (145 km) off the coast of the U.S.
June 19, 1963, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina V. Tereshkova, the first woman to travel in space, returned to Earth in the spacecraft Vostok 6.
July 1, 1963, the U.S. Postal Service instituted the Zone Improvement Plan Code, commonly known as the ZIP Code.
August 5, 1963, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom signed the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty in Moscow.
November 22, 1963, The most notorious political murder in recent American history occurred when John F. Kennedy, the 35th U.S. president (1961–63), was shot and killed in Dallas, Texas, while riding in an open car.
November 29, 1963, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
August 5, 1964, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson put the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution before Congress.
July 15, 1965, Mariner 4, an unmanned space probe launched by NASA in 1964, flew by Mars and returned close-up pictures of its surface, the pictures proving that the planet's rumoured canals were actually illusions.
November, 11, 1966, Gemini 12, the last spacecraft in the Gemini series and the first to make an automatically controlled reentry into Earth's atmosphere, was launched. [2]
June 9, 1967, Israeli forces attacked the Golan Heights in southwestern Syria.
July 1, 1968, the United States, the United Kingdom, the U.S.S.R., and 59 other states signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in an attempt to halt the spread of nuclear weapons.
October 31, 1968, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered an end to American bombing in North Vietnam.
July 20, 1969, in the first moon landing, the Eagle lunar landing module, carrying U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin (“Buzz”) Aldrin, landed on the Moon, and several hours later Armstrong became the first person to set foot on its surface.
August 17, 1969, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, a rock festival near Bethel, New York, that attracted 450,000 fans, ended.
April 22, 1970, First celebrated on this day in 1970 in the U.S., Earth Day—founded by American politician and conservationist Gaylord Anton Nelson—helped spark the environmental movement and quickly grew into an international event.
March 29, 1973, American troops evacuated Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) as the United States ended its involvement in the Vietnam War.
October 10, 1973, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigned from office and pleaded no contest to the charge of failing to report $29,500 in income while governor of Maryland. [2]
October 20, 1973, During the ongoing Watergate investigation, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox, prompting the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus in what has been called the “Saturday Night Massacre” of Justice Department officials.
August 8, 1974, faced with the near-certain prospect of impeachment for his role in the Watergate Scandal, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon announced his resignation and was succeeded by Gerald Ford the following day.
October 11, 1974, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was established by President Gerald R. Ford to oversee the civilian use of nuclear materials in the United States.
April 17, 1975, Cambodia's ruling Lon Nol government collapsed, and the communist forces of the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, entered Phnom Penh and forcibly dispersed its citizenry into rural areas.
April 30, 1975, The South Vietnamese capital of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) fell to North Vietnamese troops during the Vietnam War.
July 30, 1975, former Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
July 20, 1976, the Viking 1 lander touched down at Chryse Planitia on Mars.
November 2, 1976, Jimmy Carter, former Democratic governor of Georgia and recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2002, was elected 39th president of the United States this day in 1976, narrowly defeating Republican Gerald R. Ford.
August 17, 1978, Ben L. Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and Larry Newman completed the first transatlantic balloon flight, in Double Eagle II.
June 18, 1979, the SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) II treaty was signed by U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Ilich Brezhnev.
July 2, 1979, the United States first issued the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin.
December 25, 1979, the Soviet Union began its occupation of Afghanistan during the Afghan War.
November 4, 1980, Conservative Republican Ronald Reagan was elected the 40th president of the United States.
July 21, 1983, the world's lowest recorded temperature, -128.6 °F (-89.2 °C), was measured at Vostok Station, Antarctica.
June 18, 1983, the first American woman to fly into outer space, Sally Ride, was launched with four other astronauts aboard the space shuttle Challenger.
October 25, 1983, the U.S. military, under President Ronald Reagan, invaded the tiny island country of Grenada.
November 2, 1983, U.S. President Ronald Reagan signed a bill designating the third Monday in January a national holiday in memory of Martin Luther King, Jr.
November 6, 1984, U.S. President Ronald Reagan won reelection in a landslide victory over Democratic candidate Walter F. Mondale.
April 26, 1986, A devastating environmental catastrophe occurred early this morning in 1986 when an explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine released large amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere.
March 24, 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground, spilling some 11 million gallons (41 million litres) of oil into Prince William Sound in Alaska and creating the largest oil spill in U.S. history.
December 20, 1989, The United States launched Operation Just Cause, a military invasion of Panama, the initial attack focusing primarily on the Panama City headquarters of leader Manuel Noriega.
August 2, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait and Saddam Hussein's subsequent refusal to withdraw his troops sparked the Persian Gulf War, in which an international force led by the United States quickly defeated Iraq.
August 6, 1990, the UN Security Council imposed economic sanctions on Iraq, ruled by Saddam Hussein, for its invasion of Kuwait four days earlier.
February 24, 1991, U.S. ground operations began in the Persian Gulf War, more than a month after an air war was launched against Iraq to free Iraqi-occupied Kuwait.
December 25, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned the presidency of the Soviet Union, which ceased to exist at the end of the year.
February 26, 1993, the World Trade Center in New York City was bombed in an act of terrorism, Islamic radicals being later convicted for the crime.
February 27, 1991, U.S. President George Bush ordered a cease-fire effective at midnight and declared victory in the Persian Gulf War, a conflict triggered by Iraq's invasion and occupation of Kuwait in August 1990.
April 19, 1993, After a 51-day standoff with U.S. federal agents, some 80 members of the millennialist Branch Davidian religious group perished in a fire at their compound near Waco, Texas.
April 19, 1995, In what was the worst act of terrorism in U.S. history up to that time, a truck bomb nearly destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, killing 168 and injuring more than 500 people.
November 5, 1998, The journal Nature published a report that DNA testing had confirmed (still disputed by some) that Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, fathered at least one child by his slave Sally Hemings, as had long been alleged.
November 6, 2000, On this day in 2000, the U.S. presidential election ended in a statistical tie between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush, only to be settled on December 12 by the U.S. Supreme Court after a bitter legal dispute.
June 11, 2001, Timothy McVeigh—convicted of the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, which killed 168 people in what was then the worst terrorist attack in the U.S.—was executed.
October 22, 2001, Two postal workers in Washington, D.C., died of pulmonary anthrax, two others were hospitalized with the disease, and a fifth, who worked at a different facility from the previous four, was diagnosed with pulmonary anthrax on October 25. It was believed that the victims contracted the disease from letters laced with the poisonous substance, an unexplained act of terrorism.
September 11, 2001 the World Trade Center in New York and the Penagon in Washington D.C. became the worst terrorist attack in the U.S.
October 9, 2001, the United Service Organizations (USO) appointed entertainer Wayne Newton as its official celebrity front man, replacing Bob Hope, who had served in that capacity since the early 1950s.
October 11, 2002, the U.S. Congress passed a bill, by a wide margin, granting U.S. President George W. Bush broad authority to use force against Iraq.
March 19,2003, U.S. President George W. Bush ordered air strikes against Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, thus launching the Second Persian Gulf War to oust Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
April 9, 2003, Baghdad fell to U.S.-led forces on this day in 2003, several weeks after the start of the Iraq War, a conflict begun to oust Iraqi Pres. Saddam Hussein because of his supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction.
April 15, 2003, U.S. President George W. Bush declared that the government of Saddam Hussein in Iraq had fallen as a result of the Iraq War and the following day asked the United Nations to lift sanctions against Iraq.
April 24, 2003, Officials of North Korea informed U.S. diplomats that it had nuclear weapons and was making bomb-grade plutonium.
Over the past 250 years, Alaska has seen a series of boom-and-bust "rushes" to exploit the land: rushes for fur, gold, copper, salmon, oil, and other natural resources. Some people came and stayed, simply because Alaska is like nowhere else - wild, extreme, and amazing. Still, the aim often has been to take the rewards of the land and sea, then enjoy them somewhere else. Many Alaskans see a recurring theme of neglect by federal authorities and exploitation by "outside interests." While the notion is easily exaggerated, the fact remains that today, decades after becoming a state, much of Alaska's economic fate remains under control of the Lower 48 states. Much of the Alaskan fishing fleet, for example, is based not in Alaska, but in the State of Washington.
Development of a modern tourism industry in the early 1970’s has brought millions of visitors to Alaska’s once-remote frontier in a “tourist rush.” The more daring travelers come by car or motor home via the Alaska-Canada Highway (ALCAN), built during World War II (WWII) for the war effort. However, most come by air or sea. A state owned ferry system, the “Alaska Marine Highway”, has linked southeast Alaska to British Columbia and the state of Washington since the early 1960’s. Each year thousands of ferry travelers experience the stunning sea and landscapes of the Inside Passage via the Alaska Marine Highway.
Since the 1970’s, the cruise ship industry has met that same growing tourist demand with cruises to Glacier Bay National Park. By the beginning of the 21st century, the cruise ship industry had expanded its service to many Ports-Of-Call in Alaska. Currently the most highly visited port of call for cruise ships is the City of Seward.
God endowed Alaska - The Great Land with wealth, scenery, and a scope surpassed by few regions on the earth. Alaska is a virtual subcontinent more than twice the size of the state of Texas. It contains 16 percent of the United States' land area. Alaska’s population has always been tiny. At the time of the U.S. purchase in 1867, Alaska had about 30,000 people, more than 29,000 of them Native American. By 1993, despite statehood and the oil boom, Alaska’s population had grown to only an estimated 607,000. Today, Alaska’s population remains approximately the same as in 1993.
