TIM MAGUIRE

In a dramatic reversal of its long-standing commitment to the Nationalist
Chinese government of Taiwan, and a policy of non-recognition of the
communist People’s Republic of China, America’s U.N. representatives
vote to seat the PRC as a permanent member. Over American objections,
Taiwan was expelled.

The reasons for the apparently drastic change in U.S. policy were not
hard to discern. The United States had come to value closer relations
with the PRC more than its historical commitment to Taiwan. U.S.
interest in having the PRC’s help in resolving the sticky Vietnam
situation; the goal of using U.S. influence with the PRC as diplomatic
leverage against the Soviets; and the desire for lucrative economic
relations with the PRC, were all factors in the U.S. decision.

TIM MAGUIRE

TIM MAGUIRE

On this day in 1492, Christopher Columbus, an Italian explorer,
sighted Watling Island in the Bahamas. He believed that he had
found Asia while attempting to find a Western ocean route to
India. The same day he claimed the land for Isabella and
Ferdinand of Spain.

Explorer Christopher Columbus. 

The USS Cole bombing was an attack against the United States Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Cole on 12 October 2000, while it was being refueled in Yemen’s Aden harbor. 17 American sailors were
killed and 39 injured in the deadliest attack against a United States
naval vessel since 1987.

Casualties of the USS Cole being Returned To The United States.

On this day in 1960, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev was reported
to have pounded a shoe on his desk during a dispute at a U.N.
General Assembly.

SANDY KOZEL

The Fugitive Slave Act was declared by the U.S. Congress on this
day in 1850. The act allowed slave owners to claim slaves that had escaped into other states.

September 18, 1975, after crisscrossing the country with her captors–
or conspirators–for more than a year, Patty Hearst, or “Tania,” as
she called herself, was captured in a San Francisco apartment and
arrested for armed robbery. Despite her later claim that she had
been brainwashed by the SLA, she was convicted on March 20, 1976,
and sentenced to seven years in prison. Her prison sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter and she was released in
February 1979. She later married her bodyguard. In 2001, she
received a full pardon from President Bill Clinton.

Patty Hearst poses with a Symbionese Liberation Army poster.

On this day in 2001, Letters postmarked in Trenton, N.J., and later
tested positive for anthrax, were sent to the New York Post and
NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw.