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20091776 Club

Clinton lands in Pyongyang; Kim pardons two American journalists held since spring

Euna Lee and Laura Ling, seized at the Tumen River and sentenced to twelve years of hard labor, fly home to Los Angeles before sunrise.

Five months after North Korean soldiers seized two American journalists at the Tumen River, Euna Lee and Laura Ling sat in a Pyongyang guest house facing twelve years of hard labor. On August 4, 2009, former President Bill Clinton landed in North Korea on an unannounced private mission — accompanied by John Podesta and a small delegation — and spent twenty hours there, including a meeting with Kim Jong Il. The next morning, Kim issued a pardon. Lee and Ling flew home to Los Angeles before sunrise on August 5, landing at Bob Hope Airport to meet their families and Al Gore on the tarmac…

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More from June 8
1789

Madison rises in the House with a list of amendments; rivals are still calling for a second convention

Drawing on more than two hundred proposals from state ratifying conventions, he moves to revise the Constitution before its opponents can dismantle it.
1906

Roosevelt signs the Antiquities Act; no proclamation needed from Congress to seal off federal land

For decades, pot hunters have stripped pottery and bones from Chaco Canyon and across the Southwest. The president can now designate national monuments alone, by proclamation.
1861

Tennessee votes to leave the Union; the eleventh state is also the last

Middle Tennessee swings from 51 percent against secession in February to 88 percent in favor today, providing the decisive margin, though East Tennessee refuses to accept the result.
17761776 Club
A local farmer leads the 2,000-man column off the road as British reinforcements land behind them, cutting off any retreat north.
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More from Modern America
2007

Apple's iPhone goes on sale; thousands who camped for days outside stores are first in line

Jobs unveiled the 3.5-inch touchscreen device in January as "an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator" in one, and today the wait ends at Apple and AT&T stores nationwide.
2019

Trump steps across the DMZ line; no sitting president has stood on North Korean soil before today

Kim tells him "I never expected to meet you at this place," and the two go on to talk privately for 53 minutes inside Freedom House, South Korea's Moon kept out at Pyongyang's request.
2011

Atlantis clears the tower; the shuttle program's last mission is airborne

Ferguson, Hurley, Magnus and Walheim lift off from Complex 39A at 11:29 a.m., hauling 9,400 pounds of supplies to the space station.
2001

Atlantis lifts off with Quest airlock; station finally has its own door to open space

Astronauts Gernhardt and Reilly will bolt the 6.5-ton steel-and-aluminum chamber into place across three spacewalks, giving the station a hatch usable by both American and Russian suits.
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