From NPR Newsletter 9.24.23

"What do you get that special someone?

When North Korea’s Kim Jong Un recently left Russia, he was given several drones and body armor, “with protection zones for the chest, shoulders, throat and groin,” according to TASS, the Russian state news agency.

This act of Russian largesse inspired me to ask our friends in NPR’s research and development to find previous gifts between heads of state.
 
 In 802, Harun al-Rashid, Caliph of Abbasid, gave Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne an elephant. I wonder if Charlemagne said thanks, then wondered, “How do I feed him?”

 In 1512, Venice sent 50 blocks of cheese to the Sultan of Egypt. Before there were Triscuits?
 
 The huge carved desk made from timbers of the HMS Resolute that is still used by U.S. presidents was given to President Rutherford B. Hayes by Queen Victoria in 1880. But in 2012, British P.M. David Cameron gave President Obama a Dunlop ping-pong table. 
 
Dunlop is a British company. So are Bentley automobiles. Might the Obamas have preferred a gift from the car company to a ping-pong table? But those pesky U.S. ethics laws!
 
 President Nixon knew Leonid Brezhnev was a car enthusiast. And so, at a summit meeting, he gave the Soviet premier a 1973 blue Lincoln Continental, replete with custom black velour seats. Russian heads of state don’t have to fret about ethics laws.
 
 But in the annals of official gifts, it is hard to top what the French people gave the U.S. in 1886: the Statue of Liberty.