On this day in …

* 1840, during an exploring expedition, Captain Charles Wilkes
sights the coast of eastern Antarctica and claims it for the United
States.

* 1915, during World War I, Britain suffers its first casualties
from an air attack when two German zeppelins drop bombs on Great
Yarmouth and King's Lynn on the eastern coast of England.

* 1944, the federal government relinquished control of the nation's
railroads following settlement of a wage dispute.

* 1950, the People's Republic of China bestows diplomatic
recognition upon the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

* 1955, a presidential news conference was filmed for television for
the first time, with the permission of President Eisenhower.

* 1961, outgoing President Dwight D. Eisenhower cautions incoming
President John F. Kennedy that Laos is "the key to the entire area
of Southeast Asia," and might even require the direct intervention
of U.S. combat troops.

* 1983, Klaus Barbie, AKA the "Butcher of Lyons", the Nazi Gestapo
chief of Lyons, France, during the German occupation, is arrested in
Bolivia for his crimes against humanity four decades earlier. As
chief of Nazi Germany's secret police in occupied France, Barbie
sent thousands of French Jews and French Resistance members to their
deaths in concentration camps, while torturing, abusing, or
executing many others.

* 1999, a mere three weeks after California passed a law against
cyberstalking, Gary Dellapenta is charged with using the Internet to
solicit the rape of a woman who had rejected his advances.