Today in History - September 5: What was inside this man's briefcase triggered the Cold War
A young clerk working in the Soviet embassy in Canada defected on September 5, 1945, triggering what would later be known as the Cold War.
Not wanting to be transferred back to the USSR, Igor Gouzenko left the embassy in Ottawa with a briefcase full of decryption material.
Suspicious there would be sleeper agents at the police, he first went to newspaper the Ottawa Journal.
But when the night editor did not want to deal with Gouzenko, he went to the Department of Justice to find the office closed.
The Canadian government initially thought Gouzenko was a headache they didn't want to deal with. Canada and the USSR were allies and World War II had ended only days earlier.
It was only after men from the Soviet embassy forced their way into Gouzenko's apartment that the Canadian government stepped in.
What he revealed shocked them.
Gouzenko revealed a member of Canadian Parliament, Fred Rose, was the leader of a spy ring.
Rose, a Communist Party member, was arrested, tried and jailed for six years.
The scandal shook the western world and set the stage for the Red Scare crusades of the 1950s.
Gouzenko, who did his utmost to keep his identity a secret, changed his name to George Brown and lived a quiet life in suburban Canada.
Whenever he appeared on TV, he would do so with a pillowcase over his head.
On September 5, 1972, at the Munich Olympic Games, the Palestinian terrorist group Black September took members of the Israeli team hostage.
The Munich Games had been billed as the "Friendly games" and the welcoming theme involved low levels of security, making it easy for the terrorists to penetrate the athlete's village and seize the Israeli athletes.
Their aim was to force the release of prisoners held by Israel and two left-wing extremists in West German jails.
But a botched rescue attempt resulting in a shootout at an airfield near Munich resulted in the deaths of 11 Israeli athletes and a West German police officer.
The Munich massacre gave the Palestinian cause an audience and triggered a new era of international terrorism.
In retaliation, Israel deployed a special force from its Mossad intelligence service around the world to hunt down and assassinate all those involved.
Eager to westernise the Russian nobility, Tsar Peter I imposed a tax on beards on September 5, 1698.
Only peasants and the clergy were exempt from the 100 ruble-a-year tax.
Peter also forbade his court officials from wearing caftans in favour of western clothes.
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