What a hypnotic sight. Maybe one day we'll have a Space Force and threaten to rain fire down upon the planet.
In this photo made today in 1969, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, Lady Bird Johnson, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and a crowd of others watch Apollo 11 lift off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Back then it must have seemed almost miraculous. A bunch of theoretical scientists in the U.S. and Soviet Union said manned spaceflight would work, the politicians went, “Great—here's some billions of dollars or rubles to make it happen.” And years later it did when Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. But Apollo 11 was the big one, in our opinion. It's one thing to toss a person into space in a hollow cannonball like Sputnik, and another bowl of pancake batter altogether to send people to another world and bring them back alive. Opinions vary, of course, but we think this flight was and remains the most important rung on humanity's celestial ladder. As things are developing, with countries reneging on their promises not to exploit space for monetary or military gain, it would be better for both the cosmos and Earth if there are no more rungs for a while. Neil Armstrong's quote, when he set foot on the moon, was, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” We've taken a giant leap backwards since then.
The National Police Gazette claims Nasser said yessir to fugitive Nazis.
This month in 1961 The National Police Gazette put Adolf Hitler on its cover yet again. We don’t know how many times he appeared there, but this makes the twentieth issue we’ve found and posted. When last we left der Führer he was hiding out in either Argentina or Antarctica, but according to Gazette scribe Harvey Wilson, Hitler was directing his minions as they launched a new Nazi empire in Egypt. Wilson tells readers that Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser’s government was populated by ex-SS officers, that the secret police was being run by Joachim Damling, former head of the Gestapo in Düsseldorf, that there were Egyptian versions of the Hitler Youth, that the economy was being reorganized to a Nazi model, and a vast military machine was being built. So, is any of this true? Well, many Nazis fled to Egypt at the end of World War II, probably many hundreds, including Aribert Heim, who was known as Dr. Death, and Nazi propagandist Johann Von Leers, who converted to Islam and took a high post at Egypt’s foreign ministry. However, fleeing Nazis ended up settling in many countries, including the U.S. Among those were Otto Von Bolschwing, who in Germany had helped develop a blueprint to purge the country of Jews and later worked for the CIA, and Arthur L. Rudolph, who helped the Nazis build the V-2 rocket and other weapons and eventually ended up being honored by NASA—twice. In any case, this is an example of what makes tabloids so interesting to us. Some stories—like the one about Hitler living in Antarctica—are patently ridiculous, while others have at least a kernel of truth. The thrust of this story is largely true—Nazis did flee to Egypt, and manywere welcomed by the government. As for the rest of the story—Nasser did indeed reorganize Egypt’s economy and reshape its military sector, but we can’t confirm that it was due to Nazi influence. And we also can’t confirm the claims about Egyptian Hitler Youth and Joachim Damling, but even if parts of the story were wrong, a tabloid doesn’t need many victories to establish credibility in the eyes of its readership—it just needs a few big ones. On that score you have to give the Gazette credit—it said there were Nazis in Egypt and it was right.
Former NASA mission specialist gets probation. Haven’t had a mugshot on the site for a while, so here’s a doozy from astronaut/stalker Lisa Nowak, who was sentenced yesterday to a year’s probation for burglary and misdemeanor battery. Nowak, 46, a mission specialist on the space shuttle Discovery in July 2006, ambushed and pepper-sprayed a woman who was dating a space shuttle pilot for whom Nowak had the hots. When arrested, Nowak had in her possession a steel mallet, a knife, rubber tubing, and several large garbage bags, all of which police suspected she planned to put to sinister use. We disagree. We suspect she was going to put them to awesome use. Wait—that came out wrong. We’re 100% glad Nowak’s intended victim survived. That’s a given. Goes without saying. Obviously. But there’s also a teeeeeny pulp-influenced part of us that’s curious what sort of mischief a NASA specialist had in mind with those items. On our smartest day we could, like, maybe improvise a hickory smoker with that stuff. But a NASA specialist? The possibilities are endless. Guess we’ll never know unless she left behind diagrams like da Vinci, another homicidal scientist. Yeah, we know—you haven’t heard about his many killings. Read a book people.
Walter Cronkite always looked at things from a news perspective. Walter Cronkite testing out a Reduced Gravity Walking Simulator at the Lunar Landing Research Facility in Langley, Virginia, circa 1968. The photo is from a NASA history site here.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1931—Nevada Approves Gambling
In the U.S., the state of Nevada passes a resolution allowing for legalized gambling. Unregulated gambling had been commonplace in the early Nevada mining towns, but was outlawed in 1909 as part of a nationwide anti-gaming crusade. The leading proponents of re-legalization expected that gambling would be a short term fix until the state's economic base widened to include less cyclical industries. However, gaming proved over time to be one of the least cyclical industries ever conceived. 1941—Tuskegee Airmen Take Flight
During World War II, the 99th Pursuit Squadron, aka the Tuskegee Airmen, is activated. The group is the first all-black unit of the Army Air Corp, and serves with distinction in Africa, Italy, Germany and other areas. In March 2007 the surviving airmen and the widows of those who had died received Congressional Gold Medals for their service. 1906—First Airplane Flight in Europe
Romanian designer Traian Vuia flies twelve meters outside Paris in a self-propelled airplane, taking off without the aid of tractors or cables, and thus becomes the first person to fly a self-propelled, heavier-than-air aircraft. Because his craft was not a glider, and did not need to be pulled, catapulted or otherwise assisted, it is considered by some historians to be the first true airplane. 1965—Leonov Walks in Space
Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov leaves his spacecraft the Voskhod 2 for twelve minutes. At the end of that time Leonov's spacesuit had inflated in the vacuum of space to the point where he could not re-enter Voskhod's airlock. He opened a valve to allow some of the suit's pressure to bleed off, was barely able to get back inside the capsule, and in so doing became the first person to complete a spacewalk. 1966—Missing Nuke Found
Off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean, the deep submergence vehicle Alvin locates a missing American hydrogen bomb. The 1.45-megaton nuke had been lost by the U.S. Air Force during a midair accident over Palomares, Spain. It was found resting in nearly three-thousand feet of water and was raised intact on 7 April.
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