May 5, 1960: President Eisenhower denied that a U.S. spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union. Eisenhower was lying. The Soviets produced the U.S. pilot, Francis Gary Powers. Eisenhower admitted lying about the incident. At a later Paris peace conference with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Eisenhower refused to apologize. Khrushchev stormed out of the meeting and the Cold War got colder.
Francis Gary Powers — the U-2 spy pilot shot down by the Soviets — was held until 1962, when he was traded for Soviet spy Rudolf Abel. Powers later became a traffic reporter for KNBC-TV in Los Angeles; he died in a 1977 helicopter crash. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
May 5, 1962: President Kennedy congratulated the first American in space — Alan Shepard — after his 15-minute mission aboard his Freedom 7 capsule. The capsule, powered by a Redstone missile, propelled Shepard to an altitude of 116 miles. During his 15-minute mission (Shepard did not go into orbit), he was able to see the curvature of the Earth, and described a view never seen by any American before. On May 8, Shepard traveled to the White House to receive a NASA Distinguished Service Medal from President John F. Kennedy. Three weeks later, JFK would announce to a joint session of Congress the goal of sending an American safely to the Moon by the end of the decade.
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May 5, 1985: President Reagan angered Jewish leaders and Holocaust survivors by visiting a German cemetery — Bitburg — where Hitler's SS troops were buried. Before going to Bitburg, Reagan also visited the site of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, in which victims of Nazi persecution, mostly Jews, were exterminated. At Bergen-Belsen, Reagan stood by a marker identifying a mass grave of 50,000 bodies and said solemnly, "Here they lie. Never to hope. Never to pray. Never to love. Never to heal. Never to laugh. Never to cry."
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"I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell." -Harry Truman
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