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Journalist David Mendell has been writing about urban issues and politics for the Chicago Tribune since 1998. From October 2003 to November 2004, Mendell covered Barack Obama's U.S. Senate campaign for the Tribune. Having gained intimate access to Obama and his top aides, the journalist spent nearly three years thereafter researching and writing his biography of the senator, Obama: From Promise to Power. Mendell, who's also authored Britannica's biography of Obama, has kindly agreed to answer a few questions about the new U.S. president.

Advice for President Obama: There is no such thing as bargain-basement regime change. The failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion made Kennedy appear weak, inexperienced, indecisive, and the Soviet Premier, Nikita Khruschev, tried to capitalize on the youthful American presidents failings. Four months after the invasion Khruschev began building the Wall to divide Communist East Berlin from West Berlin. Less than a year later Khruschev and Castro planned to install nuclear missiles on the island of Cuba---only ninety miles from the United States---a decision that precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

Jim Jones, leader of the Peoples Temple religious community that he formed in the 1950s, and some 900 of his followers died this day in 1978 in Guyana in a massive act of murder-suicide known as the Jonestown massacre.

More Events on this day:

1941: John Christian Watson, the first Labour prime minister of Australia, died in Sydney.

1905: Prince Charles (Carl) of Denmark was elected king of Norway as Haakon VII.

1903: Philippe-Jean Bunau-Varilla, representing Panama, met with U.S. Secretary of State John Hay to negotiate the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty, which gave the United States a strip 10 miles (16 km) wide across the Isthmus of Panama for construction of the Panama Canal.

1882: Famed operatic soprano Amelita Galli-Curci was born in Milan.

1814: Brazilian sculptor and architect Aleijadinho, known for his beautiful Rococo statues and his churches, died in Mariana.

1477: William Caxton, a pioneering English printer, published Dictes and Sayenges of the Phylosophers, the first dated book printed in England.