An historic moment: « the first US passenger jet to land in Vietnam since 1975 lands at Ho Chi Minh City ». Oddly enough, it was flown by bankrupt United Airlines, and odder still, carried as a passenger … wait for it … David Hasselhoff, of all people.

‘United Airlines Flight 869, from San Francisco, arrived in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, at shortly after 10:00 p.m. Friday (10 a.m. EST). The flight — carrying 260 people, including some Vietnamese who fled their country after the war — was first U.S. commercial plane to touch down at Tan Son Nhat International Airport since the wartime capital of South Vietnam fell to the communists in 1975. … Many Americans who fought in the war have vivid memories of Tan Son Nhat airport, where they caught Pan American “freedom birds” home or to rest stops such as Hong Kong and Japan. Now-defunct Pan American was the last commercial U.S. airline to fly out of Vietnam before Saigon fell on April 30, 1975. Meanwhile, Vietnam’s state-owned airline has expressed interest in opening its own route to San Francisco by the end of next year, or early 2006.’

Now about that Domino Theory, among other things …