In some cases, February 16, 1987 isn't all that much different than February 16, 2012 and the similarities are eerie.

With the recent summit at Rejkjavik a memory, all eyes were on Mikhail Gorbachev and the Reagan White House over issues of Missile defense and the proposed Star Wars program of the Reagan Administration. The Cold War was at the wait-and-see stage.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Itzhak Shamir arrived at the White House for talks admit gloomy bumps in U.S.-Israel relations, the Pollard Affair Spy scandal and Iran-Contra being among them.

Speaking of Israel, this day began the Trial of alleged Nazi Death Camp Commandant John "Ivan The Terrible" Demjanjuk. The second such trial since Adolf Eichmann some 25 years earlier, the proceedings were to take place in a converted Movie Theater in Tel-Aviv and defense for Demjanjuk claiming they had the wrong guy. Witnesses for the Prosecution got started and it promised to drag up a lot of ugly past.

Whereabouts of jailed Soviet dissident Iosef Begun where conflicting with some reports saying he was already released and still others saying he was still languishing in a Gulag. Answers were being pressed.

And, in a deja-vu sort of way, protests and civil unrest were bubbling up in Athens over proposed Greek austerity measures, in place since 1985. With massive cuts in wages, along with widespread unemployment and a virtual eradication of the Middle Class, people were taking to the streets to assail the moves of the Papandreou government.

And who says history doesn't repeat itself?

All this and more via The CBS World News Roundup with Christopher Glenn for February 16, 1987.