19731776 Club

Nixon rejects the court order; he offers a senator's summary instead of the tapes

Archibald Cox has three days to accept Stennis's word for what's on the recordings, or else.

A federal appeals court had just ordered Richard Nixon to turn over the Watergate tapes to Special Counsel Archibald Cox. On October 19, 1973, Nixon refused to comply outright and offered a workaround instead: Senator John C. Stennis, a deaf, 72-year-old Mississippi Democrat trusted by both parties, would listen to the tapes himself and write up a summary for Cox's office. Nixon would keep the actual recordings. Cox had until the following Tuesday to accept the deal…

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Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown; he sends a stand-in rather than face Washington

Eight thousand British and German troops lay down arms as a band reportedly played "The World Turned Upside Down."

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.

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.

19871776 Club

Three days after a Silkworm missile blinded an American tanker captain, Reagan sends four destroyers to answer.

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Lockheed's stealth fighter prototype takes to the air over the Mojave

Dave Ferguson flies the YF-22 from Palmdale to Edwards in eighteen minutes, a month after its public rollout.

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.

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