R.I.P. Neil Armstrong
R.I.P. Neil Armstrong.
R.I.P. Neil Armstrong.
R.I.P. Neil Armstrong.
The first Earthrise picture taken from the Moon, 46 years ago today.
P.J. O’Rourke: “Of thee I sigh: Baby boomers bust.”
My sad generation of baby boomers can be blamed. We were born into an America where material needs were fulfilled to a degree unprecedented in history. We were a demographic benison, cherished and taught to be self-cherishing. We were cosseted by a lush economy and spoiled by a society grown permissive in its fatigue with the strictures of depression and war. The child being father to the man, and necessity being the mother of invention, we wound up as the orphans of effort and ingenuity. And pleased to be so. Sixty-six years of us would be enough to take the starch out of any nation.
The baby boom was skeptical about America’s inventive triumphalism. We took a lot of it for granted: light bulb, telephone, television, telegraph, phonograph, photographic film, skyscraper, airplane, air conditioning, movies. Many of our country’s creations seemed boring and square: cotton gin, combine harvester, cash register, electric stove, dishwasher, can opener, clothes hanger, paper bag, toilet paper roll, ear muffs, mass-produced automobiles. Some we regarded as sinister: revolver, repeating rifle, machine gun, atomic bomb, electric chair, assembly line. And, ouch, those Salk vaccine polio shots hurt.
The Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of Sputnik caused a blip in chauvinistic tech enthusiasm among those of us who were in grade school at the time. But then we learned that the math and science excellence being urged upon us meant more long division and multiplying fractions.
The Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space programs were cool, but not as cool as the sex, drugs, and rock and roll we’d discovered in the meantime. When Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon in 1969, many of us had already been out in space for years, visiting all sorts of galaxies—in our own heads. And in our own heads was where my generation spent most of its time.
Read the whole thing. O’Rourke, in his witty style, captures the failure of my baby boom generation perfectly.
The CIA has now declassified the story behind their effort in 1971 and 1972 to recover a satellite film canister from 16,400 feet below sea level in the Pacific.
Divers have discovered a Roman shipwreck off the Italian coast so well preserved that they think the food cargo in 200 amphoras might still be intact.
All the best: Neil Armstrong was recovering today from heart bypass surgery.
The Roman Colosseum has been found to be leaning about sixteen inches to the south.
Comeback: The Marines have put in an order for 12,000 M1911 pistols, the iconic 45 caliber pistol designed by John Browning more than a 100 years ago and used by the American military for most of the first half of the 20th century.
New analysis of Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter images appears to prove that most of the American flags planted at the Apollo landing sites are still standing.
Sadly, the analysis also seems to prove what Buzz Aldrin reported, that the Apollo 11 American flag was blown over by the exhaust from the ascent stage when the astronauts took off.
I wonder if anyone from the United States will ever have a chance to pick it up?
Researchers think they’ve found a World War II German U-boat buried in the sand in a Canadian river, almost 100 miles inland.
The preliminary plans for rebuilding the Titanic were released today by Australian billionaire Clive Palmer.
The flamboyant billionaire said Titanic II’s first voyage remained set for late 2016, with the boat due to sail from China to England ahead of her maiden passenger journey to North America. Interest was “overwhelming”, he said.
It ain’t easy creating your own nation, and here’s the history to prove it.
“The United States of winners.”
We didn’t fight hard for our freedom on that summer day in 1776 so we could go ahead and be mediocre. We wanted it so badly because we had lofty goals to be a nation of winners, people who excelled at everything we tried. We wanted to become powerful and prosperous so that we wouldn’t have to rely on anyone else, ever again. And we knew that being prosperous would make us generous. We wanted to win at that, too.
And from there, we went on to win at all kinds of stuff, and we did it without apologizing. Charles Lindbergh didn’t land in Paris and apologize for getting there first. We didn’t have a space race with the Soviet Union to see who could get there last. Bruce Jenner doesn’t have an Olympic gold medal (and two inexplicable earrings) because he’s a loser.
Our desire to win has made us who we are.
And it is for this reason that, right now, the United States is about to develop multiple private companies capable of putting humans into space, while every other country in the world that has tried it can barely manage to come up with one option.
Librarians in Germany announced today the discovery of a lost copy of the map that named the New World, hidden between the pages of a book for 200 years.
Tragedy: Retired astronaut Alan Poindexter has been killed in a jet ski accident.
It appears the Easter Island statues did walk the eleven miles from the quarry where they were carved — as believed by natives. With video.
Charting the relative economic strength of the world’s most powerful countries over the past 2000 years.
The article cites 1800 and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution as a key moment in this history. I would also note that 1800 is about the time that freedom and Adam Smith’s ideas of economic liberty took hold in both North American and Europe.
Glass jewellery believed to have been made by Roman craftsmen has been found in an ancient tomb in Japan.
The mystery for archeologists and historians now is this: How did this Roman jewelry get there?
An evening pause: This is something every visitor to New York should try to do. The first time I did it was back in the mid-1970s during my college days. It was around 2 am in the morning when we started from Brooklyn. We crossed to Manhattan, had a meal at a 24 hour Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, then walked back, watching the sunrise over Brooklyn.
Congress has pulled all funding for the Eisenhower memorial, the design of which is strongly opposed by the Eisenhower family.
The shuttle prototype Enterprise was damaged on Sunday while being transported by barge to its New York City museum home.
A fascinating look at the space race and what the future held, written in 1959.
The article, reprinted by Forbes, is amazingly detailed, optimistic, yet also cool-headed about the future. For example, consider this quote about the future of manned spaceflight:
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Something caused the Earth to bombarded with cosmic rays in 775 AD but scientists have no idea what.
Amelia Earhart found?