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| On this date in: | |
| 1799 | George Washington, the first president of the United States, died at his Mount Vernon, Va., home at age 67. |
| 1819 | Alabama joined the Union as the 22nd state. |
| 1861 | Prince Albert, husband of Britain's Queen Victoria, died in London. |
| 1911 | Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen became the first man to reach the South Pole. |
| 1946 | The United Nations General Assembly voted to establish the U.N. headquarters in New York City. |
| 1979 | The album "London Calling" by the Clash was released. |
| 1985 | Wilma Mankiller became the first woman to lead a major American Indian tribe as she took office as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. |
| 1989 | Nobel Peace laureate Andrei D. Sakharov died in Moscow at age 68. |
| 1993 | A Colorado judge struck down as unconstitutional the state's voter-approved ban on gay rights laws. |
| 1997 | Cuban President Fidel Castro declared Christmas 1997 an official holiday to ensure the success of Pope John Paul II's upcoming visit to the communist country. |
| 1998 | President Bill Clinton stood witness as hundreds of Palestinian leaders renounced a call for the destruction of Israel. |
| 1999 | U.S. and German negotiators agreed to establish a $5.2 billion fund for Nazi-era slaves and forced laborers. |
| 1999 | Charles M. Schulz announced he was retiring the "Peanuts" comic strip. |
| 2000 | The Federal Trade Commission unanimously approved the $111 billion merger of America Online and Time Warner. |
| 2006 | South Korea's Ban Ki-moon was sworn in as the eighth secretary-general of the United Nations. |
Article of the day
Amundsen reaches South Pole
Norwegian Roald Amundsen becomes the first explorer to reach the South Pole, beating his British rival, Robert Falcon Scott.
Amundsen, born in Borge, near Oslo, in 1872, was one of the great figures in polar exploration. In 1897, he was first mate on a Belgian expedition that was the first ever to winter in the Antarctic. In 1903, he guided the 47-ton sloop Gjöa through the Northwest Passage and around the Canadian coast, the first navigator to accomplish the treacherous journey. Amundsen planned to be the first man to the North Pole, and he was about to embark in 1909 when he learned that the American Robert Peary had achieved the feat.
Amundsen completed his preparations and in June 1910 sailed instead for Antarctica, where the English explorer Robert F. Scott was also headed with the aim of reaching the South Pole. In early 1911, Amundsen sailed his ship into Antarctica's Bay of Whales and set up base camp 60 miles closer to the pole than Scott. In October, both explorers set off--Amundsen using sleigh dogs, and Scott employing Siberian motor sledges, Siberian ponies, and dogs. On December 14, 1911, Amundsen's expedition won the race to the Pole and returned safely to base camp in late January.
Scott's expedition was less fortunate. The motor sleds broke down, the ponies had to be shot, and the dog teams were sent back as Scott and four companions continued on foot. On January 18, 1912, they reached the pole only to find that Amundsen had preceded them by over a month. Weather on the return journey was exceptionally bad--two members perished--and a storm later trapped Scott and the other two survivors in their tent only 11 miles from their base camp. Scott's frozen body was found later that year.
After his historic Antarctic journey, Amundsen established a successful shipping business. He later made attempts to become the first explorer to fly over the North Pole. In 1925, in an airplane, he flew within 150 miles of the goal. In 1926, he passed over the North Pole in a dirigible just three days after American explorer Richard E. Byrd had apparently done so in an aircraft. In 1996, a diary that Byrd had kept on the flight was found that seemed to suggest that the he had turned back 150 miles short of its goal because of an oil leak, making Amundsen's dirigible expedition the first flight over the North Pole.
In 1928, Amundsen lost his life while trying to rescue a fellow explorer whose dirigible had crashed at sea near Spitsbergen, Norway.
Today Birthdays
| Vanessa Hudgens turns 20 years old today. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 AP Photo/Dan Steinberg Actress Vanessa Hudgens ("High School Musical" movies) turns 20 years old today.
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