Sunday · September 27, 2026
Get the app
Edited daily
American history, reported as it happened
Made for the 250th
The events of August 14 · Read the full edition → · More from August 14 →
20151776 Club

Kerry reopens the U.S. Embassy in Havana after 54 years without a flag

Three Marines who lowered that same flag in 1961 hand a new one to the honor guard.

For 54 years, no American flag flew over the U.S. mission on Havana's Malecón. On August 14, 2015, Secretary of State John Kerry stood before the seven-story concrete building to officially reopen the embassy, three weeks after Washington and Havana restored full diplomatic ties. Eight members of Congress watched as Larry C. Morris, Mike East and Jim Tracy, the three Marines who had lowered the flag in 1961, presented a new one to the Marines now stationed there. It rose over a building that had spent 38 years as a low-profile "interests section" under Swiss protection…

1776 Club

This story is held for members.

Members read every story of the day — and tomorrow's, and the next.

Join the 1776 Club
$17.76 your first year · then $39.99/yr · cancel anytime
More from August 14
1935

Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act; the elderly get a federal pension

Payroll taxes will fund old-age benefits, unemployment insurance, and aid to families with dependent children.
1842

Washington declares the Seminole war over; no one signed anything

General Worth's campaign of burned villages and starved crops empties the Everglades of most Seminole resistance, but a few hundred hold out.
1941

Churchill and Roosevelt issue a joint charter for the postwar world

Meeting in secret off Newfoundland, the two leaders lay out eight principles for peace before America has even entered the war.
18481776 Club
Seven years after the first wagon trains rolled west, the region finally got a governor appointed in Washington.
Read this as a member →
Read the full August 14 edition →Everything that happened on August 14 →
More from Modern America
1997

Old Ironsides sails again; Cronkite takes the helm off Marblehead

The 1797 frigate moves under her own canvas for the first time in 116 years, on sails paid for through a national campaign of citizen and student donations.
1999

Collins becomes first woman to command a shuttle; Columbia loses an engine on the way up

A loose pin ruptures coolant tubes during ascent, but Columbia still reaches orbit to release the heaviest payload NASA had ever flown.
1998

Clinton tells grand jury of "improper" ties to Lewinsky, then tells the country he misled them

Seven months after denying it on camera, the president reverses himself twice in one day.
1998

Thirteen Tomahawks hit a Khartoum medicine factory; Washington says it made nerve gas

The strike came thirteen days after the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, and the target was a plant that made most of Sudan's antibiotics.
The Daily Record · free by email

Tomorrow's edition in your inbox — one featured story, one quote, and today's flag status. Free, every morning.

The full experience

Read every story, narrated, in the app.

Take this story with you.

The complete daily edition, the deep-cut narration, and a library that's yours — the 1776 Club lives in the app.

Your membership comes with you — every event, narrated, with flag alerts, CarPlay, and your saved library.

Download on the App Store