This week in National Press Club history

April 27, 1955: Vice President Richard M. Nixon leads a sing-along from the piano at the Club’s annual Congressional Night, an event noted for its bipartisan atmosphere. Senator Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Texas) and Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn (D-Texas) join in. Later, Nixon solos with a performance of “The Missouri Waltz.”

April 27, 2006: U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) participates in a Newsmaker press conference with George Clooney on human rights abuses in Darfur, Sudan. It attracts the largest crowd of journalists at a Club event.

April 29, 1985: The Washington Press Club and the National Press Club merge after a tough, three-year negotiation. Cheryl Arvidson, a leader in the merger drive, remarks, “In the end, logic prevailed on both sides, and the merger was completed.”

April 29, 1993: The Dalai Lama, exiled leader of Tibet, appeals for political independence for Tibet, now recognized officially by the United States as a province of China.

May 1, 1979: George H. W. Bush announces his first presidential bid at a press conference at the Club. Four months later, at a Club luncheon, the former CIA director discusses the nation’s economic troubles, the Soviet threat, and domestic energy production. He later withdraws from the race, and accepts Ronald Reagan’s offer to join the Republican ticket as his running mate.

This Week In National Press Club History is sponsored by the History & Heritage Committee, which preserves and revitalizes the Club’s century-plus history with events, panel discussions, oral histories and lobby displays of prominent Club speakers over the past century. For information on the Committee’s activities or to join it, contact Chair Gil Klein at [email protected].