In 1960 on the eve of a proposed summit with US President Eisenhower, USSR President Khrushchev announced that a US plane had been shot down over USSR territory.
The Washington DC Evening Star reported “Summit Plans Believed Intact – No Shift Report After Red Attacks”. Other front page stories included Princess Margaret’s marriage and a likely delay for Jimmy Hoffa’s trial.
Inside, the paper reported that NASA was missing a high altitude weather research plane whose pilot was Francis G Powers, a test pilot for Lockheed born 17 August 1929. He had in fact been employed by the CIA since 1956.
Why Powers’ birth date was reported is not known, but things unravelled, the summit went west – or east – and Powers’ trial for espionage opened in Moscow on 17 August 1960. He was sentenced and later the subject of a prisoner exchange.
Khrushchev is remembered for his policies of de-Stalinisation. In the west, the most famous satire of Stalin appeared in Animal Farm, first published on 17 August 1945.
