[yellow_fever_01]

Today Show anchor Barbara Walters accompanied the Nixon press plane in 1972 to cover the first presidential trip to Beijing after the resumption of diplomatic relations between the United States and the PRC. At the end of the trip when she was packing for the return trip, she decided that the panties that she was wearing had outlived their usefulness and threw them in the trashcan in her hotel room.

She then boarded the press bus for the trip to the airport. Before the bus left the hotel, one of the female staff members of the hotel boarded the bus, holding the worn pair of panties and proceeded down the aisle until she came to Barbara Walters and handed her the panties, in full view of all of her professional colleagues. She was too embarrassed to explain her intentions to the hotel worker and simply quietly took the proffered underwear.