This week in National Press Club history

October 11, 1976: Isaac Stern, renowned concert violinist, advocates for the arts in a luncheon speech.

October 12, 1999: Dave Thomas, founder and CEO of the Wendy’s restaurant chain, urges expanded and improved adoption services in the United States, an important cause to him as a Depression-era adoptee. At a Press Club luncheon, he also dispenses some old-fashioned business advice, and joins a long list of business leaders who have appeared at the Club, including Donald Trump and Elon Musk, president and CEO of the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation.

October 16, 2008: John Cosgrove receives the first President’s Award of Distinction for his fifty-nine years of service to the Club.

October 17, 1998: The first 5K race is run to benefit National Press Club scholarship programs.

October 17, 2013: The National Press Club holds a retrospective on the “Saturday Night Massacre” forty years after Solicitor General Robert Bork fires Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, leading ultimately to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon the following August. This historic program brings together key figures in the event, including reporter Bob Woodward, former Assistant Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, and Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.

This Week In National Press Club History is sponsored by the History & Heritage Committee, which preserves and revitalizes the Club’s century-plus history through lobby displays, panel discussions, special events and oral histories.

For more information about the Committee’s activities, or to join it, contact Chair Gilbert Klein at [email protected]