On this day in ...... 1959 (50 years ago today), Margot Fonteyn (left) arrived at an airport in New York after the diva ballerina had endured a 24-hour detention in Panama City, where authorities were looking for her husband, whom they suspected was planning a coup against the government. Fonteyn, who'd been born Margaret "Peggy" Hookham 40 years earlier in Surrey, England, told reporters she did not know the whereabouts of her husband, Dr. Roberto Arias, formerly Panama's ambassador to Britain. Within days his compatriots indeed would stage a failed coup. And in 1999 his aunt, Mireya Moscoso de Arias, would become Panama's 1st woman President.
... 1997, a 4-month siege by the Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Amaru ended when troops stormed the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima, Peru, and freed 71 hostages. A Supreme Court judge was the only hostage killed, in addition to
all 14 hostage-takers and 2 soldiers. Subsequent inquiry revealed that a number of rebels had been executed after surrendering in building at right. That revelation led to criminal charges against the intelligence chief of the man then Peru's President -- Alberto Fujimori, himself, as we've posted, convicted of crimes just this month.
