This week In National Press Club history
June 4, 2013: Chilean President Sebastian Pinera tells a Press Club Luncheon that Chile aims to be the “first Latin American developed country without poverty.” He is one of the many world leaders who have appeared at the Club, including President-elect Vicente Fox of Mexico, who at a “Newsmaker” event in 2000 proposes an open border with the United States, as well as a European-style economic union extending throughout the Americas.
June 5, 1982: The Club celebrates the start of National Press Building renovations with a “Wrecker’s Ball.”
June 5, 1974: A few weeks before the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon, Washington Post investigative reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein speak at a Club Luncheon.
June 5, 2013: Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack tells a National Press Club luncheon that “We have a climate that is clearly warming, and resulting changes ‘threaten the future of agriculture as we know it.”
June 6, 1913: The Club holds its first contest to determine “the best speller in the United States.” Fourteen members of the press compete with 14 members of Congress for the title, including five Senators and nine Representatives. The President of the United States and members of the Cabinet are among the hundreds of spectators. A former school teacher and college professor, Congressman Frank Willis, Ohio Republican, wins.
A hundred years later, the History & Heritage Committee organizes a second contest between the two opponents, which takes place in the Club ballroom, and the winner of the title this time is Senator Tim Keane, Democrat of Virginia, who survives one misspelling and wins the bee with the word “nonpareil.”
This Week In National Press Club History is brought to you by the History & Heritage Committee, which preserves and revitalizes the Club’s century-plus story through lobby displays, events, panel discussions and its ongoing oral history project.
For more information about the Committee, or to join it, contact Chair Gilbert Klein at [email protected].