President Ronald Reagan, wife Nancy and Chief Justice
Warren Burger during the 1981 oath of office ceremony.

On January 20, 1981, minutes after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration
as the 40th president of the United States (above) the 52 U.S.
captives held at the U.S. embassy in Teheran, Iran (above)
were released, ending the 444-day Iran Hostage Crisis.

On November 4, 1979, the crisis began when militant Iranian
students, outraged that the U.S. government had allowed the
ousted shah of Iran to travel to New York City for medical
treatment, seized the U.S. embassy in Teheran.

On October 10, 1985, the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille
Lauro reached a dramatic climax when U.S. Navy F-14 fighters intercepted an Egyptian airliner attempting to fly the Palestinian
hijackers to freedom and force the jet to land at a NATO base in Sigonella, Sicily. American and Italian troops surrounded the plane,
and the terrorists were taken into Italian custody.

On October 7, four heavily armed Palestinian terrorists hijacked
the Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of
Alexandria, Egypt. Some 320 crewmembers and 80 passengers,
including 11 Americans, were taken hostage. 

Identifying themselves as members of the Palestine Liberation
Front, a Palestinian splinter group–the gunmen demanded the
release of 50 Palestinian militants imprisoned in Israel. If their
demands were not met, they threatened to blow up the ship and
kill all the Americans and British passengers on board.

The Achille Lauro cruise ship leaves Egypt’s Port Said harbor after being released from terrorist hijackers.

TIM MAGUIRE

On October 23, 2002, about 50 Chechen rebels storm a Moscow theater,
taking up to 700 people hostage during a sold-out performance of a
popular musical.

The second act of the musical “Nord Ost” was just beginning at the
Moscow Ball-Bearing Plant’s Palace of Culture when an armed man
walked onstage and fired a machine gun into the air. The terrorists—
including a number of women with explosives strapped to their bodies,
identified themselves as members of the Chechen Army. They had one
demand: that Russian military forces begin an immediate and complete
withdrawal from Chechnya, the war-torn region located north of the
Caucasus Mountains.

Russian special forces officers make their way toward the theater
seized by Chechen rebels.

 
MIKE GRACIA

On this day in 1981, the 52 Americans held hostage by Iran for 444
days arrived in the United States and were reunited with their
families.

On this day in 1959, American Airlines had the first scheduled transcontinental flight of a Boeing 707.