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.
An American U-2 spy plane was shot down while conducting espionage over the Soviet Union on this day in 1960. The incident derailed an important summit meeting between President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that was scheduled for later that month. The U-2 spy plane was developed by the CIA and could take high-resolution pictures of headlines in Russian newspapers as it flew overhead. The CIA assured Eisenhower that the Soviets did not possess weapons sophisticated enough to shoot down the high-altitude planes but on May 1, a U-2 flight piloted by Francis Gary Powers disappeared while on a flight over Russia. The spy agency reassured the president that the plane was equipped with self-destruct mechanisms to render any wreckage unrecognizable and the pilot was instructed to kill himself in such a situation. But Khrushchev produced mostly-intact wreckage of the U-2 and the captured pilot alive, forcing Eisenhower to publicly admit that it was indeed a US spy plane.
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