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It was just 60 years ago today, on June 3, 1965 (I was ten, and already fully engaged on the "current events" front), that Edward H. White, a US astronaut on Gemini 4, became the first human to walk in space:
It was only a little more than eighteen months later that Ed White-at the age of 36--died in a cabin fire, alongside astronauts Virgil (Gus) Grissom and Roger Chaffee, during a pre-flight test of the first mission of the subsequent Apollo (three-man) trials, designed with the intention of landing a man on the moon.
I remember both events, the spacewalk broadcast to the world in real-time, and the Apollo 1 catastrophe, which we learned about after the fact. And how the nation first celebrated, and then mourned, as one.
Such risk-takers. So brave. "To boldly go where no man has gone before," all of them.
Two-and-a-half years later (another worldwide event!) we watched the "giant step," when Apollo 11's Neil Armstrong moved out of the landing module to plant his foot on the moon:
"LIVE FROM THE MOON" indeed. Thanks, Dad, for the "pictures or it didn't happen" moment. (Although when his children got Dad's slides digitized after he died, I must say that I spent some time trying to figure out these weird blobby images and wondering if they were mistakes.)
Here's the moon, from the garden of the UK family home, at the exact time that Armstrong and Aldrin were bouncing around down below while Collins was orbiting above:
They made it. I hope Ed White was applauding from the wings.
And I hope (although I sometimes worry otherwise) that such a brave, enterprising--and sometimes dangerous--spirit hasn't been lost in the weeds of narcissism, self-involvement, and driveling testosterone-hating lunacy, forever.
Discussion (24)
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I love the fact that Ed White was having so much fun during his spacewalk, he had to be ordered back inside.
I'll never forget walking home from school and seeing the headline about Apollo 1 on a paper in a rack outside our local ice cream shop. I went inside, gave Ari a nickel for the paper, went outside, sat on the step, read the story and cried.
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Just as I'll never forget walking home with my mother from my fourth-grade class at Edward Devotion School in Brookline Massachusetts, on the day that JFK was shot. We came across the janitor for the apartment building in which we were living. He was crying, howling, prostrate, in the street. "What on earth is the matter?" my mother asked. "The President has been shot," he replied. "Drunken old fool," said Mum.
It was November 22, 1963.
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Is it true that Candace Owens doesn't believe anyone walked on the moon? Maybe she should be interviewed by Tucker Carlson.
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If such a thing is true when it comes to her own belief, then I think it speaks more WRT Owens than it does the rest of us. (BTW, I think Tucker has interviewed Candace on a number of other sites more often than I care to contemplate.)
There's a point at which (it's been discussed in other desirability/undesirability factors, when it comes to membership on this site) the book simply isn't worth the candle.
I'm all about the book being worth the candle. Have at it.
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