A Blast from the Past

Today is Nov. 17.

On this date in 2001, in the first major test of America's strengthened airport security after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, an Atlanta man forced the closing of one of the world's busiest airports when he violated security rules. Michael Lasseter, who said he rushed back into the airport to retrieve his camera bag and feared he would miss his flight, was arrested and Hartsfield International Airport was shut down for four hours.

Congress convened in Washington for the first time on this date in 1800. Previously, the U.S. capital had briefly been in several other cities -- including New York and Philadelphia.

George Washington -- a surveyor by profession -- had been assigned to find a site for a capital city somewhere along the upper Potomac River, which flows between Maryland and Virginia. He chose the southernmost possible point, which happened to be the closest commute from Mount Vernon -- his estate in Virginia -- despite the fact this placed the city in a swamp called Foggy Bottom.

A little more than a year after he first published the New York Weekly Journal, colonial America's first regularly published newspaper, John Peter Zenger was arrested on this date in 1734 for libeling the colonial governor of New York. His trial, in August 1735, and subsequent acquittal was an important early step toward freedom of the press in America.

President Reagan was sharply criticized by Congress on this date in 1987, when a report from congressional committees investigating the Iran-Contra scandal declared, "If the president did not know what his national security advisers were doing, he should have."

National Security Adviser John Poindexter and his aide, Oliver North, had traded arms for hostages in the Middle East and then diverted the profits to the Contra rebels trying to overthrow the Marxist government of Nicaragua, something Congress had banned.

The United States and the Soviet Union began negotiating their way back from the nuclear precipice on this date in 1969, when the strategic arms limitation talks -- better known by the acronym "SALT" -- opened in Helsinki, Finland.

It was on this date in 1997 that 60 people were killed when six Islamic militants opened fire on a group of tourists at Luxor, Egypt. A three-hour gun-battle claimed 10 more lives, including those of the gunmen.

Samuel Gompers organized the forerunner of the American Federation of Labor on this date in 1881. That union later merged with the Congress of Industrial Organizations to form the AFL-CIO.

And the Suez Canal in Egypt was opened on this date in 1869, linking the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. The 100-mile-long canal had taken 1.5 million men a decade to dig. It shortened the sea route from Europe to India by about 6,000 miles. An Anglo-French commission ran the Suez Canal until 1956, when Egypt seized it.

We now return you to the present, already in progress.