Sunday · September 27, 2026
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American history, reported as it happened
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19591776 Club

Fuchs walks free after nine years; the man who handed Moscow the implosion bomb flies to Dresden

British law allowed no more: the Manhattan Project physicist, stripped of his citizenship, served the maximum sentence for passing secrets to an ally.

By 1959, Klaus Fuchs had served nine years of a fourteen-year sentence — the maximum British law allowed for passing secrets to an ally. The German-born theoretical physicist had worked at the heart of the Manhattan Project, sitting in Hans Bethe's Theoretical Physics Division at Los Alamos while feeding implosion bomb designs to a Soviet courier named Harry Gold. British authorities released him that year, stripped of his citizenship, and he flew to Dresden, East Germany, where he resumed his scientific career and eventually joined the central committee of the Socialist Unity Party…

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More from June 23
1972

Nixon tells Haldeman to use the CIA to block the FBI's Watergate inquiry

Six days after the break-in at Democratic headquarters, the Oval Office recording system captures the President invoking national security to shut down investigators.
1961

Twelve nations' Antarctic pact takes force; military operations and nuclear tests are now banned on the continent

The agreement, signed in 1959 after Argentine marines fired on British researchers, designates everything south of 60°S as a scientific preserve open to all signatories.
1972

Nixon signs 37 words into law; no federal program may turn away a student on the basis of sex

Senator Birch Bayh's passage, buried in the Education Amendments of 1972, draws almost no public attention at the signing.
17801776 Club
Continental troops and New Jersey militia blunt both British columns at the Rahway crossings, and the redcoats leave nearly the whole town in ashes as they pull back.
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More from Cold War America
1966

Young and Collins ride Agena's engine to 412 nautical miles; no human has flown higher

Gemini 10 docks with its target vehicle hours after liftoff from Cape Kennedy, with Collins set to walk outside and retrieve hardware from a second Agena still drifting in orbit.
1960

From out of the deep to target, perfect: Polaris fires from a submerged submarine

A second missile follows within two hours, both striking 1,100 miles downrange off Florida.
1969

Eagle touches down with about 50 seconds of fuel left; Armstrong radios "the Eagle has landed"

Alarms blared during descent as Mission Control watched the fuel gauge fall, and a spacecraft named for a bird settled into lunar dust.
1962

Jackie Robinson becomes first Black player elected to the Hall of Fame

Five years after his last game, the writers vote him in on the first ballot.
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