TODAY IN HISTORY: Patsy Cline dies

In 1910, an avalanche at Rogers Pass, B.C., killed 62 railway workers.

In 1933, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party were voted into power in a German election.

In 1942, a U.S.-Canada defence board approved the construction of the Alaska Highway.

In 1946, Winston Churchill gave his Iron Curtain speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo. Said Churchill, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.”

In 1953, Josef Stalin died after ruling the Soviet Union for almost 30 years. He was 73. After his death, first secretary Nikita Khrushchev charged the dictator with the murder of thousands during purge trials and farm collectivization in the 1930s. In 1961, the 22nd party congress ordered his body removed from the Lenin Mausoleum in Moscow.

In 1955, Elvis Presley made his television debut on “The Louisiana Hayride.”

In 1963, country singers Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins were killed when their small plane crashed near Camden, Tenn. The three were returning to Nashville from Kansas City, where they had participated in a benefit concert for the widow of a disc jockey. The deejay, Cactus Jack Call, had been killed in a car crash.

In 1999, Paul Okalik was elected by his fellow MLAs as the first premier of Nunavut.