Alaska celebrates the long awaited grant of statehood with an enthusiastic celebration. It becomes America's forty-ninth state and, by far, the largest.

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On January 3, 1959, President Eisenhower presides over the ceremony welcoming the territory of Alaska into the Union as the 49th and largest state.

After President Lyndon Johnson declared Alaska a major disaster area, a news report tallies the damage resulting from the strongest earthquake in American history, which jolted southern Alaska on March 27, 1964, and measured 8.4 on the Richter scale.