1978: NOAA announces gender-neutral hurricane naming system
Federal News Network presents a daily update of important moments in the history of the U.S. government.
May 12, 20206:00 am
< a min read
On Feb. 10, 1962, American spy pilot Francis Gary Powers was released by the Soviets in exchange for Col. Rudolf Abel, a senior KGB spy who was caught in the U.S. five years earlier. The two men were brought to separate sides of the Glienicker Bridge, which connects East and West Berlin, as negotiators talked in the center of the bridge where a white line divided East from West. Finally, Powers and Abel were waved forward and crossed the border into freedom at the same moment — 8:52 a.m. Berlin time. Just before their transfer, Frederic Pryor, an American student held by East German authorities since August 1961, was released to American authorities at another border checkpoint.Abel had been apprehended in New York in 1957, while Powers was arrested by Soviets when his plane from Pakistan to Norway, flying over Soviet territory, was shot down over Sverdlovsk in the Ural Mountains.