On October 21, 1960, Sen. John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard Nixon took part in the last of a series of the first televised presidential debates in U.S. history.

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For the first time in U.S. history, a debate between major party presidential candidates is shown on television. The presidential hopefuls, John F. Kennedy, a Democratic senator of Massachusetts, and Richard M. Nixon, the vice president of the United States, met in a Chicago studio to discuss U.S. domestic matters. Kennedy emerged the apparent winner from this first of four televised debates, partly owing to his greater ease before the camera than Nixon, who, unlike Kennedy, seemed nervous and declined to wear makeup. Nixon fared better in the second and third debates, and on October 21 the candidates met to discuss foreign affairs in their fourth and final debate. Less than three weeks later, on November 8, Kennedy won 49.7 percent of the popular vote in one of the closest presidential elections in U.S. history, surpassing by a fraction the 49.6 percent received by his Republican opponent.

In July 1959, Vice President Richard Nixon traveled to Moscow to open the U.S. Trade and Cultural Fair in Sokolniki Park. In the kitchen of the exhibit's model house built by General Electric, Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev began an impromptu series of debates on the merits of capitalism and communism. An audio segment of one of the exchanges, which was filmed by the American company Ampex on the first videotape recorder, illustrates the Cold War tensions simmering beneath the surface.