This Day Sep 26 in History: Nixon and Kennedy Face Off in First-Ever US Presidential Debate

In 1956, a University of Maryland student came up with a brilliant idea. Fred Kahn, 23, wrote to his university administration proposing a live presidential debate between Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson and his Republican opponent, Dwight Eisenhower. Kahn had read in the papers that Stevenson described the presidential election as being carried out in a “circus atmosphere,” which might have prompted him to make his proposal. Hailing from a family of Jewish emigrants, his father fled Nazi Germany and settled briefly in Belgium, then in the United States. Fred would serve in the US Army during the Korean War and,…