THE NIXON-KHRUSHCHEV KITCHEN DEBATES: On this day in 1959, Vice President Richard Nixon, on a trip to Moscow to open a trade show exhibit of American wares, engaged Soviet First Secretary and Premier Nikita Khrushchev what came to be known as “the Kitchen Debates.”

The Exhibit contained a full-scale model of a modern American kitchen. Khrushchev insisted that the Soviets had such things. But Nixon countered by telling him that “any steel worker” could afford them in America.

The debate was friendly and inconclusive. But no doubt many Soviet citizens who visited the Exhibit knew they didn’t have such things. And … well … some of them probably got to wondering about how things were in America.