United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt sails on Astor's Yacht, Nourmahal for 10 days vacation at sea in Jacksonville, Florida. President Roosevelt with his son and other officials aboard the yacht. He waves his hat to the crowd. Ascot Yacht sails away from the harbor for a trip to the Bahamas.
The launch of the National Foundation's expanded 1959 Program for Victories Beyond Polio in New York. Children suffering from Polio, Arthritic disease and birth disease attend the launch of National Foundation's expanded 1959 Program. They move on crutches and wheelchair. Women accompany the children. The three children are the representatives of the March of Dimes Against Arthritis, birth defects and Polio. Women hold posters.
WS building in Washington, D.C. , possibly the Department of Labor. Labor Secretary James P. Mitchell, steel industry chief negotiator R. Conrad Cooper, and Steelworkers Union leader David J. McDonald gathered at a table. James P. Mitchell announces settlement of the 116 day steel strike of 1959, which started on July 15, 1959 and ended with an October 21 court injunction which was upheld by the Supreme Court on November 7. Mitchell explains that a "recommendation for settlement" was made, but that his announcement was pending ratification. The three men shake hands after the announcement. The narrator explains that the pact has benefits "totaling some 39 cent an hour."
Cheering Cuban crowds seen celebrating Fidel Castro's successful overthrow of Batista, in 1959, in Havana, Cuba. Fidel Castro with Nikita Khrushchev outside Hotel Theresa in Harlem, New York City, before meetings at the United Nations building in New York City, during the opening of the 15th General Assembly (September 19, 1960). View of Castro walking in front of UN building entrance. View of Soviet Navy ships carrying missiles from Cuba, back to the Soviet Union, in 1962. Nikita Khrushchev gesturing and talking outside a building. Newspaper photograph of Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko conversing with U.S. President John F. Kennedy, who is seated in his rocking chair at the White House.
President Dwight D Eisenhower and Premier Nikita Khrushchev shake hands in the White House during Khrushchev's visit in America, soon after recent Soviet advances in the "space race." Closeup images of the moon, and of images of far side of the moon recorded by Soviets, and also brief Soviet Russian science fiction animated scenes depicting space ships traveling toward the moon, and another space ship vessel in orbit near the moon. In United States two monkeys are shown, named Able and Baker who were part of rocket testing before human flights took place. View of a monkey strapped into a Jupiter rocket and launch is shown of a Jupiter rocket with the monkeys for their space flight. Seven astronauts of the Project Mercury program are shown in training in a weightless, or zero gravity chamber.
Fidel Castro visits New York City, April 15, 1959, and gives a speech to large crowd in New York's Central Park. Back in Cuba, revolutionaries show officials and members of the press, a prison cell and injuries suffered by a former prisoner. They display instruments of torture used by the Batista regime. Colonel Cornelio Rojas, Chief of Police in Santa Clara, is seen in jail cell. He is walked under guard by revolutionaries and stands against a wall before a firing squad who execute him on orders of Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Revolutionaries bringing charges against Batista officials. People testify against them. Accused Lieutenant Enrique Despaigne Noret appears before a judgment panel. He is later seen, handcuffed, stepping from a vehicle at San Juan Hill,Santiago de Cuba, January 12, 1959. He stands before a firing squad and is allowed to write something on a paper. He is then shot and falls into a ditch or grave behind him.