1. On December 15, 1897, the steamship Portland arrived in Seattle, Washington, carrying a ton of gold from the Klondike Gold Rush in Alaska.

2. In 1958, on December 15, an earthquake of magnitude 8.3 struck the village of Lituya Bay in Alaska, creating a massive tsunami that reached a height of 1,720 feet, the highest in recorded history.

3. December 15, 1969, marked the opening of the trans-Alaska pipeline, a 789-mile-long system that transports crude oil from the Prudhoe Bay oil field to Valdez, Alaska.

4. In 1974, on December 15, the Anchorage Daily News published its first edition, becoming Alaska's largest newspaper with a circulation of over 63,000.

5. December 15, 2003, is the day when a 7.5-magnitude earthquake occurred in the Rat Islands of the Aleutian Islands chain, making it the most potent quake in the US that year. The Rat Islands are a remote group of islands, and no injuries or significant damage were reported.