President Richard M. Nixon called then-Senator-elect Joe Biden after Biden’s wife and daughter were killed in a car crash. The tragedy happened on Dec. 18, 1972, 50 years ago on Sunday. The recording, from the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, shows two men whose lives were to take different arcs through American history. Biden was sworn in as senator a month later in his sons’ hospital room in Wilmington, Del. Two years later, on Aug. 9, 1974, facing impeachment over the Watergate