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Historic handshakes Throughout history, some handshakes have become a symbol of peace and hope.
Adolf Hitler and Neville Chamberlain
Adolf Hitler, right, shakes hands with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in Munich on Sept. 30, 1938. Along with leaders of France and Italy, Chamberlain would later sign the Munich Agreement, which legitimized Nazi Germany's annexation of the Sudetenland, part of then-Czechoslovakia.
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AP
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Truman, Churchill and Stalin
President Harry S. Truman, center, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, left, and Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union shake hands in Potsdam, Germany, on July 23, 1945. The triple handshake capped off a series of discussions on how to handle postwar Europe, after the official surrender of Nazi Germany on May 8 of that year.
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AP
John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev
President John F. Kennedy welcomes Nikita Khrushchev, the premier of the Soviet Union, at the home of the U.S. ambassador in Vienna on June 3, 1961. The handshake kicked off the historic talks between the two leaders, which touched on nuclear disarmament, ongoing conflict in Southeast Asia and ideological disagreements between the two leaders.
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AP
Mao Zedong and Richard Nixon
Mao Zedong, the leader of the Chinese Revolution and first chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, shakes hands with Richard Nixon, the 37th president of the United States, on Feb. 22, 1972, in Beijing. A staunch anti-Communist throughout much of his political career, Nixon greeted Zedong during his first official visit to China.
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AFP/Getty Images
Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat
Menachem Begin, left, the founder of the Likud Party and sixth prime minister of Israel, shakes hands with Anwar Sadat, the third president of Egypt, in the halls of the Israeli Knesset on Nov. 20, 1977. Sixteen months later, on March 26, 1979, in Washington, Israel and Egypt signed their historic peace treaty, making Egypt the first Arab nation to recognize the Jewish state.
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Getty Images
Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev
Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States, first shook hands with Mikhail Gorbachev, the last head of state for the Soviet Union, at a summit in Geneva on Nov. 19, 1985. That handshake signaled a warming of relations between the Cold War foes. In this photo, Reagan reaches across the table to shake Gorbachev’s hand while sitting at the negotiating table during the Moscow Summit Conference on June 1, 1988, days after Reagan declared that the Cold War had ended.
Doug Mills
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AP
Andreas Papandreou and Turgut Ozal
Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou, left, and Turkish Prime Minister Turgut Ozal shake hands at the European Management Symposium on Feb. 2, 1986, a conference that would eventually become the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Relations between the two nations had been hostile ever since Greece won its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1821. Prior to the handshake, the two nations had fought in four contemporary wars.
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World Economic Forum via Wikimedia Commons
Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk
Nelson Mandela, right, the first president of South Africa to be elected in a wholly universal election, and F.W. de Klerk, the last president of apartheid-era South Africa, shake hands in Cape Town on May 4, 1990, after the historic “talk about talks” between the two parties. The conversation paved the way for ending decades of white-minority rule in the country.
Rashid Lombard
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AFP/Getty Images
Yitzhak Rabin and Yaseer Arafat
Yitzhak Rabin, left, the prime minister of Israel, and Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, shake hands in front of a jubilant crowd on the White House lawn on Sept. 13, 1993. With President Bill Clinton looming in the background, the handshake was the first ever in public by the two leaders, capping off peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian territories. Despite the relative optimism, the agreement never came to fruition.
Ron Edmonds
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AP
Queen Elizabeth II and Martin McGuinness
Queen Elizabeth II shakes hands with Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, as First Minister Peter Robinson and Prince Philip, right, stand by at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast on June 27, 2012. The queen shaking hands with the former Irish Republican Army commander is considered a landmark moment in Anglo-Irish relations.
Paul Faith
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AFP/Getty Images
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