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• In 1941, the USS Juneau was launched at Kearny, N.J., and christened by Harry Lucas, wife of Juneau's mayor. The ship was lost during World War II.

• In 1977, in the wake of the ban on bowhead whale hunting, the National Marine Fisheries Service announced that police patrols would be beefed up along Alaska's Arctic coast.

In the nation

• In 1939, the drama "The Time of Your Life," by William Saroyan, opened in New York.

• In 1957, mob boss Albert Anastasia, the "Lord High Executioner" of "Murder Inc.," was shot to death in a barber shop inside the Park Sheraton Hotel in New York. The movie musical "Pal Joey," starring Frank Sinatra, Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak, was released.

• In 1997, hundreds of thousands of black women joined the Million Woman March in Philadelphia. The Cleveland Indians avoided elimination in the World Series by defeating the Florida Marlins, 4-1, in Game 6.

• In 2002, U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., was killed in a plane crash in northern Minnesota along with his wife, daughter and five others, 1 ½ weeks before the election.

• In 2006, acknowledging painful losses in Iraq, President Bush told a news conference he was not satisfied with the progress of the long and unpopular war, but he still insisted the United States was winning and should not think about withdrawing. Serial killer Danny Harold Rolling was executed by injection for butchering five University of Florida students in Gainesville in 1990.

In the world

• In 1760, Britain's King George III succeeded his late grandfather, George II.

• In 1854, the "Charge of the Light Brigade" took place during the Crimean War as an English brigade of more than 600 men, facing hopeless odds, charged the Russian army and suffered heavy losses.

• In 1918, the Canadian steamship Princess Sophia foundered off the coast of Alaska; some 350 people perished.

• In 1951, peace talks aimed at ending the Korean War resumed in Panmunjom after 63 days.

• In 1962, U.S. Ambassador Adlai E. Stevenson presented photographic evidence of Soviet-built missile bases in Cuba to the U.N. Security Council.

• In 1971, the U.N. General Assembly voted to admit mainland China and expel Taiwan.

• In 1983, a U.S.-led force invaded Grenada at the order of President Reagan, who said the action was needed to protect U.S. citizens there.