Cold War rivals docked their spacecraft together and shook hands in orbit

On July 17, 1975, an American Apollo capsule and a Soviet Soyuz capsule docked 222 km above Earth, and astronaut Thomas Stafford and cosmonaut Alexei Leonov shook hands through the open hatch — the first handshake between the two nations' astronauts in space. For two days the crews shared meals, ran joint experiments and held press conferences together. It was the last flight of an Apollo spacecraft, and a symbolic thaw in the Cold War space race.

— NASA, Soviet space program, Apollo-Soyuz Test Project — July 1975