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19791776 Club

A pope walks into the White House for the first time; Carter greets John Paul II

Five days into his first American journey, the Polish pontiff arrives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for a meeting no predecessor ever had.

By October 6, 1979, Pope John Paul II had already said Mass on Boston Common, prayed at St. Patrick's Cathedral, and drawn crowds in Philadelphia and Chicago. That afternoon he arrived in Washington and walked into the White House to meet President Jimmy Carter, becoming the first pope ever to set foot inside the building. The two men spoke, and the Pope delivered a high-profile address on relations between church and state before his eight-day American tour closed with his departure two days later…

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More from October 6
1777

Forts Clinton and Montgomery fall in an hour; the Hudson chain goes down with them

Sir Henry Clinton lands 2,100 men at Stony Point and marches them in from the landward side, where the Americans had never finished the landward defenses.
2008

MESSENGER finds a 716-kilometer scar on Mercury's southern hemisphere

The second of three planned flybys doubles as a gravity-assist maneuver and a discovery run.
1942

Five Marine battalions cross the Matanikau in a pincer; the Japanese line east of the river breaks

A carefully drawn trap at the river mouth and an inland footbridge catches Japanese troops before they can finish digging in near Henderson Field.
19901776 Club
Six hours after liftoff, the European-built probe begins a five-year detour through Jupiter toward the Sun's unseen poles.
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More from Cold War America
1949

The last plane lands, and Operation Vittles is over

Fifteen months, 278,228 flights, and 2.3 million tons of coal and food later, the Berlin Airlift stands down.
1955

James Dean's Porsche collides with a Ford near Cholame, California; the actor is dead within the hour

Donald Turnupseed turned left in front of the Spyder without seeing it; Dean never made the Salinas race.
1968

A jet 2½ times the size of anything flying rolls out of Boeing's new Everett plant

Representatives of 26 airlines that had already ordered the plane came to see what they'd bought.
1953

Two months after the armistice, Washington signs a defense pact with Seoul

Dulles and South Korean Foreign Minister Pyun Yeong-tae put the alliance in writing; the Senate still has to approve it.
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