Meriwether Lewis and William Clark return to St. Louis, Missouri, on this day, after a two and a half year expedition to explore the Louisiana Purchase.

President Thomas Jefferson had sent them off even before he had concluded the purchase of the land from the French.

The "Corps of Discovery" was made up of 28 men and one woman, a Native American called Sacagawea.

Jack Henry Abbott had come to the attention of the literary community after writing long letters to Norman Mailer.

Abbott began writing to Mailer (who was writing a book about Gary Gilmore, a prisoner on Death Row), in 1971, about his supposed mistreatment in prison.

Some of these letters to Mailer were published in the New York Review of Books. Random House published Abbott's book 'In the Belly of the Beast'.

Abbott, who had spent most of his life in prison (he had even murdered an inmate in 1966 - Abbott says he was defending himself to a homosexual attack), was released on parole in, July 1981, after Mailer offered to employ him as a researcher.

Abbott quickly fell in with the small time crooks living in New York's Lower East Side.

Only 6 weeks after being released, Abbott got into a fight with Richard Adan, a waiter at the Bonibon restaurant in New York City. Abbott stabbed the waiter in the chest. He died.

Abbott went on the run but was re-arrested after returning to Louisiana. He committed suicide on 10th February 2002 while still in prison.