For 52 Americans, a 444-day nightmare ended 34 years ago with their release from Iranian captivity on January 20, 1981. The Iranian hostage crisis had dragged on for over 14 months since radical Iranian students had stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking the diplomats and other Americans in the facility as captives.

The whole incident took place against the backdrop of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which had seen the pro-Western Shah deposed by the forces of the Ayatollah Khomeini. The Islamic revolutionaries claimed that America had interfered in the country’s affairs for decades. The claim (which was true) helped the Ayatollah as he whipped up stories of America as “The Great Satan” in Iran. When the U.S. admitted the ex-Shah for cancer treatment in New York, revolutionaries had their pretext to take the embassy in November 1979. Women, minorities, and one sick man were released…but the remaining 52 hostages would spend over a year in captivity.

Publicly, Iran insisted the captives were “guests,” a claim which matched up very poorly with later tales from the hostages of beatings, solitary confinement, and psychological torture by their Iranian guards. The crisis was a public relations boon for the Ayatollah, who benefited from the perception that he had struck a blow against the U.S., and claimed “America can’t do a thing.”

The boast seemed to be true. Negotiations for the release of the hostages went nowhere for over a year. An attempted rescue in April 1980 was a disaster, and resulted in the deaths of 8 service members. As the captivity dragged on, Walter Cronkite began signing off the nightly news with a recap of how many days the Americans had been held. Ted Koppel’s “Nightline” got its start as a nightly update on the situation, with the same running tally on each night’s show.

The incident became a slow-moving disaster for Jimmy Carter’s presidency, and probably contributed to his defeat against Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential election. Negotiations picked up in the fall of 1980. The Shah had died, removing any chance he might return to power in Iran. Iran had been invaded by Iraq, and might have been motivated to put the matter to bed so it could focus on the war. Finally, all the hostages were released on this date in 1981. They boarded a plane, and began crying and hugging when told they were finally out of Iranian airspace.

It was Inauguration Day in the U.S., and word came down that the hostages were headed home just as Reagan finished his inauguration speech. It’s been said that the Iranians wanted to punish Carter one last time for his support of the Shah by delaying the release until he was no longer president. But Carter has since said he didn’t care who was president when he heard the news. He was just happy the hostages would soon be back home.

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