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20091776 Club

Clinton lands in Pyongyang; Kim pardons two American journalists held since spring

Euna Lee and Laura Ling, seized at the Tumen River and sentenced to twelve years of hard labor, fly home to Los Angeles before sunrise.

Five months after North Korean soldiers seized two American journalists at the Tumen River, Euna Lee and Laura Ling sat in a Pyongyang guest house facing twelve years of hard labor. On August 4, 2009, former President Bill Clinton landed in North Korea on an unannounced private mission — accompanied by John Podesta and a small delegation — and spent twenty hours there, including a meeting with Kim Jong Il. The next morning, Kim issued a pardon. Lee and Ling flew home to Los Angeles before sunrise on August 5, landing at Bob Hope Airport to meet their families and Al Gore on the tarmac…

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More from June 8
1789

Madison rises in the House with a list of amendments; rivals are still calling for a second convention

Drawing on more than two hundred proposals from state ratifying conventions, he moves to revise the Constitution before its opponents can dismantle it.
1906

Roosevelt signs the Antiquities Act; no proclamation needed from Congress to seal off federal land

For decades, pot hunters have stripped pottery and bones from Chaco Canyon and across the Southwest. The president can now designate national monuments alone, by proclamation.
1861

Tennessee votes to leave the Union; the eleventh state is also the last

Middle Tennessee swings from 51 percent against secession in February to 88 percent in favor today, providing the decisive margin, though East Tennessee refuses to accept the result.
17761776 Club
A local farmer leads the 2,000-man column off the road as British reinforcements land behind them, cutting off any retreat north.
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More from Modern America
1997

Old Ironsides sails again; Cronkite takes the helm off Marblehead

The 1797 frigate moves under her own canvas for the first time in 116 years, on sails paid for through a national campaign of citizen and student donations.
1999

Collins becomes first woman to command a shuttle; Columbia loses an engine on the way up

A loose pin ruptures coolant tubes during ascent, but Columbia still reaches orbit to release the heaviest payload NASA had ever flown.
1998

Clinton tells grand jury of "improper" ties to Lewinsky, then tells the country he misled them

Seven months after denying it on camera, the president reverses himself twice in one day.
1998

Thirteen Tomahawks hit a Khartoum medicine factory; Washington says it made nerve gas

The strike came thirteen days after the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, and the target was a plant that made most of Sudan's antibiotics.
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