Fateful Meetings

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She was carried onto the Houston Astrodome court by strapping lads in togas. He was wheeled in on a rickshaw pulled by busty models. She was, at 29, a champ in her prime. He was a wheezy 55-year-old man. Today, King's 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 win on national TV would barely be considered a sporting event. On Sept. 20, 1973, it affirmed that women could succeed in sports and more.

Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin
Crossing the Desert in a Quest for Peace

Unlike Moses' journey, Sadat's across the Sinai was not a physical hardship — his plane touched down a minute early on Nov. 19, 1977--but the Egyptian leader had to traverse the obstacle of mutual distrust to clasp the hand of his erstwhile enemy. There would be many handshakes and setbacks to come, but Sadat's arrival in Jerusalem to the cheers of Israelis still reminds us that enmity need not be eternal.

Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong
An Opening Between East and West

The ailing 78-year-old Chairman, receiving the President at his one-story Beijing home, noted apologetically, "I can't talk very well." But talk they did, for nearly an hour. After almost a quarter-century of nearly no contact, the U.S. and China had serious differences. But when the leaders clasped hands, a great wall had fallen.

Bill Gates and Paul Allen
Rise of the Computer Nerds

Tenth-grader Paul was, as one classmate described him, "a nerd who didn't look like a nerd." Eighth-grader Bill was a nerd who, well, did. But when they met at Seattle's private Lakeside School in 1968, they found a common interest in how things worked, especially computers. They soon became close, hanging out in the school computer center playing — and writing — games. "Part of the appeal," Gates would recall in his book The Road Ahead, "was that here was an enormous, expensive, grown-up machine and we, the kids, could control it." Thanks to Microsoft, the software giant that Gates and Allen would eventually found, they would control it in more ways than they could have known.

Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky
An Intimate Affair of State

The President and his intern had met each other before Nov. 15, 1995, but the first date they, well, y'know ... met was otherwise quiet. Clinton had no public events and did not leave the White House; he held a few meetings and signed a "Family Week" proclamation. Few civil servants were at work, a result of the government shutdown that led the unlikely pair to work closer together. Lewinsky, who later called their relationship until that point one of "intense flirting," flashed him the straps of her thong at a birthday party for a staff member that evening. Around 8 p.m., she passed adviser George Stephanopoulos' office, where Clinton was alone. He beckoned her in. The rest — though they never prepared us for this back in ninth-grade civics — is history.

Nelson Mandela And F.W. de Klerk
Toasting to a New South Africa

When South Africa's President took power in 1989, Mandela saw him as a "cipher." But there was no mistaking the smiling de Klerk's worth when the two finally met the following year and de Klerk told the antiapartheid leader that after 27 years in jail, he would be released the next day. De Klerk poured two tumblers of whiskey, but Mandela only pretended to drink. "Such spirits," he said, "are too strong for me." No matter. His spirit was strong enough.