By a week from Thursday, we should all be in Day 2 of the Democratic lawsuits challenging Election Day results, so there is a very good chance some noteworthy news will be underplayed.

Nov. 4 will mark the 25th anniversary of the start of the Iran Hostage Crisis. It was a Sunday, and the network interrupted the NFL game of the week for a special report. The news showed grainy film of U.S. diplomats and embassy personnel blindfolded and being walked in front of a screaming, fist-waving throng of Iranian superextremists.

For the next 444 days, as Ted Koppel told us, we were America Held Hostage.

It was the first, ugly shot at innocent Americans by crazed Islamic radicals � the first shot of many in the next two and a half decades. At the time, President Jimmy Carter unwisely took little interest as they overthrew the Shah of Iran and then, even more unwisely, allowed the Shah to enter the U.S. nine months later for cancer treatments.

The Shah had been a good � not great, good � ally for the U.S. He allowed us access to Iranian territory to conduct surveillance on the Soviets. He was an ally of Israel. He also bled the U.S. dry by forcing OPEC to jack up oil prices and he beat down dissent in his own country through his cruel secret police, SAVAK. The Soviets played on his unpopularity, sending radio programming into Iran practically begging Islamic radicals to rise up.

And rise up they did.

For more than a year, the radicals held more than 50 U.S. diplomats, military personnel and civilians against their will. Despite swelling American outrage, Carter waited and waited, hoping for some kind of diplomatic opening to occur. Then he sent Special Forces into Iran on the ill-fated Desert One mission, and eight of them died in a fiery crash during a sandstorm. After Carter lost the 1980 election, he continued working to free the hostages� release. Finally, on the eve of Ronald Reagan�s inauguration, he agreed to release $9 billion in frozen Iranian assets as part of the deal to bring them home.

As Kevin Hermening, who, as a 20-year old Marine at the time was the youngest hostage, thinks that was a bad idea. �Iran walked away with no cost in blood or treasure,� he told The Command Post. �In essence, the terrorist organizations, those who put a face on terrorism � al Qaeda, Hamas and others � they get their support from governments. By not extracting a penalty, or anything punitive, I think it simply encouraged more acts against Americans.�

The Iran Crisis also taught us something else � something that seems to be forgotten. Blue-collar Americans began demonstrating, spontaneously, outside Iran embassies in Washington and New York. (The only other memorable demonstrations in the U.S. during the late �70s involved the words, �Disco Sucks.�)

It was Topic A. Everybody wanted �our Americans� home immediately. It brought out a sense of patriotism and nationalism (although Ted Kennedy, then running against Carter for the Democratic nomination for president, took apparent delight in public criticism of U.S. actions embracing the Shah and ignoring the revolutionaries.)

Why the history lesson on something that happened 25 years ago?

Consider �Tehran Mary,� one of the Iranian �students� who seized the embassy, grabbed the hostages, and acted at the behest of the Ayatollah. Her real name is Massoumeh Ebtekar and today she�s a vice president in Iran. (Hermening, by the way, recalls hostages had much worse nicknames for her at the time than �Tehran Mary.�)

Consider the same folks who violated international law, sent a modern Persian Gulf state back in time to the 15th Century.

Consider the same folks sponsored the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers (according to Richard Clarke and others).

Consider the same folks agreed to give help to al Qaeda (according to the 9-11 Commission report.)

Consider these same folks are building nuclear capabilities.

Consider these same folks chose to have earthquake victims die in Bam rather than receive U.S. help.

It started on a football Sunday 25 years ago.

The hostages did come home, 444 days later. They landed in the U.S. at Stewart Airport in Newburgh, N.Y. and it looked like five million people came out to greet them, wave flags, show yellow ribbons, give the thumbs up and flip the bird to unflattering drawings of the Ayatollah. The crisis was over. But in many other ways, it has never ended.

***Suggested Reading***

Taken Hostage : The Iran Hostage Crisis and America's First Encounter with Radical Islam (Politics and Society in Twentieth Century America). By David Farber.

In the Shadow of the Ayatollah: A CIA Hostage in Iran. By William J. Daugherty.

The Destined Hour. By Barry Rosen and Barbara Rosen.