Jun 7, 1913: First successful ascent of Mt. McKinley
On this day in 1913, Hudson Stuck, an Alaskan missionary,
leads the first successful ascent of Mt. McKinley, the highest point on
the American continent at 20,320 feet.
Stuck, an accomplished amateur mountaineer, was born in London in 1863. After moving to the United States, in 1905 he became archdeacon of the Episcopal Church in Yukon, Alaska,
where he was an admirer of Native Indian culture and traveled Alaska's
difficult terrain to preach to villagers and establish schools.
In March 1913, the adventure-seeking Stuck set out from Fairbanks for
Mt. McKinley with three companions, Harry Karstens, co-leader of the
expedition, Walter Harper, whose mother was a Native Indian, and Robert
Tatum, a theology student. Their arduous journey was made more
challenging by difficult weather and a fire at one of their camps, which
destroyed food and supplies. However, the group persevered and on June
7, Harper, followed by the rest of the party, was the first person to
set foot on McKinley's south peak, considered the mountain's true
summit. (In 1910, a group of climbers had reached the lower north peak.)
Stuck referred to the mountain by its Athabascan Indian name, Denali,
meaning "The High One." In 1889, the mountain, over half of which is
covered with permanent snowfields, was dubbed Densmores Peak, after a
prospector named Frank Densmore. In 1896, it was renamed in honor of
Senator William McKinley, who became president that year.
Mount McKinley National Park was established as a wildlife refuge in
1917. Harry Karstens served as the park's first superintendent. In 1980,
the park was expanded and renamed Denali National Park and Preserve.
Encompassing 6 million acres, the park is larger than Massachusetts.Hudson Stuck died in Alaska on October 10, 1920. Today, over 1,000 hopeful climbers attempt to scale Mt. McKinley each year, with about half of them successfully reaching their goal.
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Jun 7, 2002: Michael Skakel convicted of 1975 murder in Greenwich
On this day in 2002, 41-year-old Michael Skakel is convicted in the 1975
murder of his former Greenwich, Connecticut, neighbor, 15-year-old
neighbor Martha Moxley. Skakel, a nephew of Ethel Kennedy, the wife of
the late U.S. Senator Robert Kennedy, was later sentenced to 20 years to
life in prison.
On October 30, 1975, Moxley was bludgeoned to
death with a golf club outside her family’s home in Greenwich, one of
America’s most affluent communities. The golf club was later determined
to have come from a set belonging to the Skakel family, who lived across
the street from the Moxleys. Investigators initially focused on one of
Michael Skakel’s older brothers, the last person Moxley reportedly was
seen alive with, as well as the Skakels’ live-in tutor as possible
suspects, but no arrests were made due to lack of evidence, and the case
stalled. 
In the early 1990s, Connecticut authorities relaunched
the investigation, and public interest in the case also was reignited
by several new books, including Dominick Dunne’s “A Season in Purgatory”
(1993), a fictionalized account of the crime, and former Los Angeles
police detective Mark Fuhrman’s “A Murder in Greenwich” (1998), in which
he claimed that Michael Skakel killed Moxley in a jealous rage because
she was romantically interested in his older brother. In 2000, based in
part on statements made by former classmates of Skakel’s who claimed he
admitted to them in the 1970s to killing Moxley, he was charged with her
murder. 
Skakel, who came from a family of seven children, had a
wealthy, privileged upbringing; however, his mother died from cancer in
1973 and he had a troubled relationship with his father. In the late
1970s, Skakel, who began drinking heavily as a teen, was sent to the
Elan School, a private boarding school in Poland, Maine, for troubled
youth. At Skakel’s 2002 trial, the prosecution presented testimony from
several of his former Elan classmates who stated that in the 1970s
Skakel had confessed to killing Moxley. One ex-classmate, a drug addict
who died shortly before the 2002 trial started, claimed at a previous
court hearing that Skakel told him, “I am going to get away with murder
because I am a Kennedy.”
At trial, prosecutors, who had no
eyewitnesses and no physical evidence directly linking Skakel to the
murder, played a 1997 taped conversation between Skakel and the
ghostwriter of an autobiography Skakel hoped to sell. Skakel said on
tape that on the night of the murder he climbed into a tree in the
Moxleys’ yard, while drunk and high on marijuana, and masturbated as he
tried to look into Martha Moxley’s bedroom window. He said that when
Moxley’s mother came to his house the next morning looking for her
daughter, he felt panicked and wondered if someone had seen him the
night before. Although Skakel never admitted on the tape to killing
Moxley, prosecutors said his words put him at the scene of the crime and
were an attempt to cover up the slaying. 
After three days of
deliberations, jurors found Skakel guilty of murder, and in August 2002,
he was sentenced to 20 years to life behind bars. Skakel’s cousin,
Robert Kennedy Jr., an attorney, later worked to get Skakel a new trial;
however, in 2010, the request was denied by the Connecticut Supreme
Court.Taken from: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ [07.06.2012]
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