A few months into George W. Bush’s presidency, a U.S. Navy spy plane on a surveillance mission near Hainan island collided with a Chinese fighter jet, forcing the American plane to make an emergency landing in mainland China — in turn, kicking off a diplomatic nightmare. Following the crash, President Bush repeatedly tried to call then-Chinese leader Jiang Zemin to diffuse the situation. But after around 12 attempts and “several agonizing days,” as Bush describes in his memoir Decisio