The shoe that the world thinks Khrushchev banged at the United Nations is one of history's most iconic symbols. Ask many Westerners, and even quite a few Russians, about the man who succeeded Stalin and then denounced him, who ruled the Soviet Union for a decade and brought to world to the nuclear brink in Cuba, and what they remember most is the shoe.

But it may never have happened.

The celebrated shoe was allegedly banged on Oct. 13, 1960. A New York Times correspondent, Benjamin Welles, reported that Khrushchev was reacting to a speech by a Philippine delegate who charged that the Soviet Union had "swallowed up" Eastern Europe and "deprived [it] of political and civil rights." According to Welles, Khrushchev "pulled off his right shoe, stood up and brandished the shoe at the Philippine delegate on the other side of the hall. He then banged his shoe on the desk."

Yet another Times man, James Feron, who was at the United Nations but did not write a story, recalls, "I actually saw Khrushchev not bang his shoe." According to Feron, whom I interviewed in 2002, the Soviet leader "leaned over, took off a slip-on shoe, waved it pseudomenacingly, and put it on his desk, but he never banged his shoe."

Did he or didn't he? A KGB general remembered that Khrushchev banged the shoe rhythmically, "like a metronome." A UN staffer claimed Khrushchev didn't remove his shoe ("he couldn't have," she recalled, because the size of his stomach prevented him from reaching under the table), but it fell off when a journalist stepped on his heel. The staffer said she passed the shoe wrapped in a napkin to Khrushchev, after which he did indeed bang it. Viktor Sukhodrev, Khrushchev's brilliant interpreter, remembers that his boss pounded the UN desk so hard with his fists that his watch stopped, at which point, irritated by the fact that some "capitalist lackey" had in effect broken a good watch, Khrushchev took off his shoe and began banging.