may 1, 1960 - U-2 Incident

Description:

A diplomatic crisis arose when the USSR shot down a U.S. spy plane during a reconnaissance mission and this event forced President Eisenhower to admit that the United States had been surveilling the Soviets for several years now. Francis Gary Powers, the plane’s pilot, was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 10 years in prison, but only served two when the United States and the Soviet Union committed the first-ever “spy swap”. This crisis resulted in a political clash between the two international powerhouses and it added change to the Cold War, since espionage was used in foreign affairs.

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