Sunday · September 27, 2026
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American history, reported as it happened
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19841776 Club

Soviet Union announces it will not send athletes to Los Angeles; fourteen nations are expected to follow

Moscow cites security concerns for its citizens on U.S. soil, but the timing echoes America's 1980 boycott of the Moscow Games.

In 1984, the world watched as the Soviet Union and its allies made a dramatic decision to boycott the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. This move, driven by political tensions and security concerns, threatened to overshadow the spirit of the Games and left a lasting impact on international sports relations…

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More from May 8
1639

Coddington founds Newport; a new settlement opens on Aquidneck Island for those driven out by the Antinomian Controversy

The colony takes shape as Coddington plants a settlement built around the promise of religious freedom in Rhode Island.
1846

Taylor's army beats a Mexican force north of the Rio Grande; a war is now underway

American troops hold their ground in the first major engagement of the border dispute, with the armies still in the field and the outcome of the wider conflict far from settled.
1976

Six Flags opens the world's first modern looping coaster; the Great American Revolution launches at Magic Mountain

The ride debuts in the park's Bicentennial summer, sending riders through a complete vertical loop for the first time on a modern steel coaster.
19421776 Club
Carrier aircraft do all the fighting as Allied forces move to block a Japanese thrust into the South Pacific.
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More from Cold War America
1963

Three powers agree: no more bombs in the sky, underwater, or in space

Underground testing remains legal; a hotline between Washington and Moscow had opened six weeks earlier.
1960

Havana seizes American holdings; Washington cancels the sugar quota within a day

By year's end every U.S. company on the island answers to Castro's government instead of its own board.
1965

Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act; literacy tests are now outlawed nationwide

Five months after troopers attacked marchers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the federal government takes oversight of Southern voter rolls.
1959

A tumbling satellite over Mexico snaps the first picture of Earth from orbit

One week after launch, a 64-element scanner aboard Explorer 6 built the image one spot at a time.
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