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• In 1898, placer gold was discovered on Porcupine Creek, a tributary of the Chilkat River near Haines.

• In 1926, a major fire in Douglas burned the entire eastern part of the town, including the Native village.

In the nation

• In 1845, the U.S. Naval Academy was established in Annapolis, Md.

• In 1935, George Gershwin's opera "Porgy and Bess" opened on Broadway.

• In 1957, President Eisenhower apologized to the finance minister of Ghana, Komla Agbeli Gbdemah, after the official was refused service in a Dover, Del., restaurant. The Milwaukee Braves won the World Series, defeating the New York Yankees in Game 7, 5-0. The television series "Zorro," starring Guy Williams as the masked hero, debuted on ABC.

• In 1967, the Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits the placing of weapons of mass destruction on the moon or elsewhere in space, entered into force.

• In 1973, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, accused of accepting bribes, pleaded no contest to one count of federal income tax evasion, and resigned his office.

• In 1997, defying the Republican Congress a second time, President Clinton vetoed a ban on certain late-term abortion procedures.

• In 2002, the House voted 296-133 to give President Bush the broad authority he'd sought to use military force against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, with or without U.N. support. Two executives who'd overseen WorldCom's financial record-keeping pleaded guilty to charges stemming from a federal probe of the company's multibillion-dollar accounting scandal.

• In 2006, the Bush administration rejected anew direct talks with North Korea in the wake of the communist country's nuclear test, and suggested it was possible the test was something less than it appeared.

In the world

• In 1911, revolutionaries under Sun Yat-sen launched their overthrow of China's Manchu dynasty.

• In 1943, Chiang Kai-shek took the oath of office as president of China.

• In 1982, Father Maximilian Kolbe, who died in the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp, was canonized by Pope John Paul II.

• In 1997, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and its coordinator, Jody Williams, were named winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. Seventy-four people were killed in the crash of an Argentine jetliner in Uruguay.

• In 2002, Hungarian novelist and Holocaust survivor Imre Kertesz won the Nobel Prize in literature.