Vietnam POW, Ex-Senator Dies

Jeremiah Denton, Jr., a retired Navy admiral revered who spent nearly eight years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam and later became a U.S. senator, died Friday. Denton was 89 years old, and according to his son, suffered from complications from a heart ailment. In 1980, the Alabama native became the first Republican elected to the Senate from his state since Reconstruction. Denton was more renowned for his wartime heroism than his politics, though. Denton was first introduced to the American public in a 1966 propaganda video broadcast by the North Vietnamese. Denton was seen blinking “torture” in Morse code.