On This Day, 7-15-08: Nixon to Visit China

Nixon announces visit to communist China

During a live television and radio broadcast, President Richard Nixon stuns the nation by announcing that he will visit communist China the following year. The statement marked a dramatic turning point in U.S.-China relations, as well as a major shift in American foreign policy.

Nixon was not always so eager to reach out to China. Since the Communists came to power in China in 1949, Nixon had been one of the most vociferous critics of American efforts to establish diplomatic relations with the Chinese. His political reputation was built on being strongly anti-communist, and he was a major figure in the post-World War II Red Scare, during which the U.S. government launched massive investigations into possible communist subversion in America.

“Nixon announces visit to communist China.” 2008. The History Channel website. 13 Jul 2008, 11:42 http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=52647.

 

On This Day

1099 – Jerusalem fell to the Crusaders.

1410 – Poles and Lithuanians defeated the Teutonic knights at Tannenburg, Prussia.

1788 – Louis XVI jailed 12 deputies who protested new judicial reforms.

1789 – The electors of Paris set up a “Commune” to live without the authority of the government.

1813 – Napoleon Bonaparte’s representatives met with the Allies in Prague to discuss peace terms.

1870 – Georgia became the last of the Confederate states to be readmitted to the Union.

1901 – Over 74,000 Pittsburgh steel workers went on strike.

1916 – In Seattle, WA, Pacific Aero Products was incorporated by William Boeing. The company was later renamed Boeing Co.

1942 – The first supply flight from India to China over the ‘Hump’ was carried to help China’s war effort.

1965 – The spacecraft Mariner IV sent back the first close-up pictures of the planet Mars.

1968 – Commercial air travel began between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., when the first plane, a Soviet Aeroflot jet, landed at Kennedy International Airport in New York.

2002 – John Walker Lindh plead guilty to two felonies. The crimes were supplying services to Afghanistan’s former Taliban government and for carrying explosives during the commission of a felony. Lindh agreed to spend 10 years in prison for each of the charges.

 

Pike expedition sets out

Zebulon Pike, the U.S. Army officer who in 1805 led an exploring party in search of the source of the Mississippi River, sets off with a new expedition to explore the American Southwest. Pike was instructed to seek out headwaters of the Arkansas and Red rivers and to investigate Spanish settlements in New Mexico.

Pike and his men left Missouri and traveled through the present-day states of Kansas and Nebraska before reaching Colorado, where he spotted the famous mountain later named in his honor. From there, they traveled down to New Mexico, where they were stopped by Spanish officials and charged with illegal entry into Spanish-held territory. His party was escorted to Santa Fe, then down to Chihuahua, back up through Texas, and finally to the border of the Louisiana Territory, where they were released. Soon after returning to the east, Pike was implicated in a plot with former Vice President Aaron Burr to seize territory in the Southwest for mysterious ends. However, after an investigation, Secretary of State James Madison fully exonerated him.

The information he provided about the U.S. territory in Kansas and Colorado was a great impetus for future U.S. settlement, and his reports about the weakness of Spanish authority in the Southwest stirred talk of future U.S. annexation. Pike later served as a brigadier general during the War of 1812, and in April 1813 he was killed by a British gunpowder bomb after leading a successful attack on York, Canada.

“Pike expedition sets out.” 2008. The History Channel website. 13 Jul 2008, 11:44 http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=5178.

Goldwater nominated for president

Senator Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona) is nominated by the Republican Party to run for president. During the subsequent campaign, Goldwater said that he thought the United States should do whatever was necessary to win in Vietnam. At one point, he talked about the possibility of using low-yield atomic weapons to defoliate enemy infiltration routes, but he never actually advocated the use of nuclear weapons in Southeast Asia. Although Goldwater later clarified his position, the Democrats very effectively portrayed him as a trigger-happy warmonger. This reputation, whether deserved or not, was a key factor in his crushing defeat at the hands of Lyndon B. Johnson, who won 61 percent of the vote to Goldwater’s 39 percent.

“Goldwater nominated for president.” 2008. The History Channel website. 13 Jul 2008, 11:52 http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=1969.

Garbo makes an appearance

On this day in 1941, master spy Juan Pujol Garcia, nicknamed “Garbo,” sends his first communiqué to Germany from Britain. The question was: Who was he spying for?

Juan Garcia, a Spaniard, ran an elaborate multiethnic spy network that included a Dutch airline steward, a British censor for the Ministry of Information, a Cabinet office clerk, a U.S. soldier in England, and a Welshman sympathetic to fascism. All were engaged in gathering secret information on the British-Allied war effort, which was then transmitted back to Berlin. Garcia was in the pay of the Nazis. The Germans knew him as “Arabel,” whereas the English knew him as Garbo. The English knew a lot more about him, in fact, than the Germans, as Garcia was a British double agent.

“Garbo makes an appearance.” 2008. The History Channel website. 13 Jul 2008, 11:58 http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=55032.

A public man must never forget that he loses his usefulness when he as an individual, rather than his policy, becomes the issue.
Richard M. Nixon

Any change is resisted because bureaucrats have a vested interest in the chaos in which they exist.
Richard M. Nixon