TIM MAGUIRE

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev speaking at the UN Assembly in 1960.

TIM MAGUIRE

After months of maintaining his innocence, Agnew pleaded no 
contest to a single felony charge of tax evasion and resigned
from office. Nixon replaced him with House Republican leader
Gerald Ford. Agnew spent the remainder of his life quietly,
rarely making public appearances.    
    
    
    
    
   
    
Gerald Ford (center) was sworn in as Vice President. Ford, the longtime
House Minority Leader, was selected as VP by Richard Nixon (far right)
after the resignation of Spiro Agnew.  Ford would become president
eight months later when Nixon himself resigned.

The Soviet Union inaugurates the “Space Age” with its launch of Sputnik,
the world’s first artificial satellite. The spacecraft, named Sputnik after the
Russian word for “satellite,” was launched at 10:29 p.m. Moscow time from
the Tyuratam launch base in the Kazakh Republic. Sputnik had a diameter
of 22 inches and weighed 184 pounds and circled Earth once every hour
and 36 minutes. Traveling at 18,000 miles an hour, its elliptical orbit had an
apogee (farthest point from Earth) of 584 miles and a perigee (nearest point)
of 143 miles. Visible with binoculars before sunrise or after sunset, Sputnik transmitted radio signals back to Earth strong enough to be picked up by
amateur radio operators. Those in the United States with access to such
equipment tuned in and listened in awe as the beeping Soviet spacecraft
passed over America several times a day. In January 1958, Sputnik’s orbit deteriorated, as expected, and the spacecraft burned up in the atmosphere.

ROSS SIMPSON

A Black September terrorist looks from the balcony of an apartment where Israeli Olympic team members are held hostage.

The Munich massacre on this day in 1972 was an attack during the 1972
Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, in which the Palestinian
terrorist group Black September took eleven Israeli Olympic team
members hostage and killed them along with a West German police
officer.

CAMILLE
BOHANNON

The Japanese surrender ceremony aboard the USS Missouri.

Japanese foreign affairs minister Mamoru Shigemitsu (center) signs
the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, Gen. Richard K. Sutherland
(left) observes.

Japan surrendered to the U.S. aboard the USS Missouri, ending
World War II. The war ended six years and one day after it began.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur signs the Japanese surrender document.

President Harry S. Truman proclaiming this day in 1945 as V-J Day.