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19831776 Club

Samantha Smith, 10, lands in the Soviet Union; Andropov's pen pal sees Moscow for herself

The Maine girl who asked the Soviet leader "are you going to vote to have a war or not?" tours Moscow, Leningrad, and a Black Sea pioneer camp at his personal invitation.

In November 1982, a ten-year-old from Manchester, Maine sat down and wrote a letter to the new Soviet leader. Samantha Smith asked Yuri Andropov plainly: "Are you going to vote to have a war or not?" Andropov wrote back the following April, comparing her to Mark Twain's Becky Thatcher and inviting her to see the Soviet Union for herself. That July, Smith toured Moscow, Leningrad, and a Black Sea pioneer camp, and told reporters the Russians were "just like us."…

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More from July 7
1846

Sloat raises the flag over Monterey; Mexico's California falls without a shot

Sailors and marines from three warships walk ashore unopposed, ending both Mexican rule and the weeks-old California Republic declared at Sonoma.
1898

McKinley signs the Newlands Resolution; Hawaii is annexed, and its $4 million debt with it

The House voted 209 to 91 and the Senate 42 to 21, with a Pacific war making the islands' coaling station and anchorage look essential to Washington.
1958

Eisenhower signs Alaska into the union; the territory has waited forty years for this moment

The House voted 210-166, the Senate 64-20; Alaska is cleared to become the 49th state, though formal admission is not yet complete.
19411776 Club
The 1st Provisional Marine Brigade, sailed from Charleston via Argentia, begins disembarkation on an island the U.S. has no treaty obligation to defend.
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Read the full July 7 edition →Everything that happened on July 7 →
More from Cold War America
1948

Truman stands on Union Square to honor three presidents North Carolina gave the nation

A sitting president stood before bronze and granite to mark where Jackson, Johnson and Polk were born.
1950

Pyongyang falls to UN troops; by nightfall, China's army is already crossing the border

Church bells rang over the North Korean capital hours before Beijing's soldiers began wading the Yalu.
1973

Two Justice Department chiefs quit in one night rather than fire the Watergate prosecutor

Nixon finally finds a third official willing to do it: Solicitor General Robert Bork.
1959

Eisenhower signs over the Army's rocket men; von Braun now works for NASA

The order strips most of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency and hands its hardware and people to the year-old civilian space agency.
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