Curated playlist
Recipients of the Legion of Merit
- Dr. SeussTheodor Seuss Geisel was born on the 2nd of March, 1904, on Fairfield Street in Springfield, Massachusetts, within walking distance of a road called Mulberry Street. He would spend decades becoming one of the best-selling children's…
- Dwight D. EisenhowerDwight David Eisenhower drafted a message he hoped no one would ever read. On the eve of the D-Day landings on the 6th of June 1944, he wrote a short statement taking full personal responsibility if the assault on Normandy failed. 'If any…
- Buzz AldrinBuzz Aldrin set foot on the Moon at 03:15:16 on the 21st of July 1969 (UTC), nineteen minutes after Neil Armstrong first touched the surface. His first words, spoken into the silence of the lunar landscape, were simply: "Beautiful view."…
- Samuel C. PhillipsSamuel C. Phillips was a general who flew fighters over occupied Europe, helped design the missiles that defined the Cold War, and then ran the program that put Americans on the Moon. Not bad for the son of an electrician from…
- Paul NitzePaul Henry Nitze was born on the 16th of January, 1907, in Amherst, Massachusetts, into a family with deep roots in German academic life. His father, William Albert Nitze, was a professor of Romance linguistics who built his career at the…
- Gail HalvorsenGail Halvorsen reached into his pocket one day in July 1948 and pulled out two sticks of gum. He had just met about thirty children standing behind a barbed-wire fence at Tempelhof Airport in Berlin, and it was all he had to give them. The…
- Walter Bedell SmithWalter Bedell Smith signed the Italian armistice beneath an olive tree at Cassibile, Sicily, on the 3rd of September 1943. The ceremony was simple. Smith represented the Allied coalition. Across the table sat Generale di Brigata Giuseppe…
- Charles DukeCharles Duke was 36 years and 201 days old when he stepped onto the Moon on the 21st of April 1972, making him the youngest person ever to walk on another world. That record has never been broken. He arrived at a site called the Descartes…
- Edwin HubbleEdwin Hubble grew up in Marshfield, Missouri, known more for his athletic prowess than his intellect, a boy who won seven first places and a third in a single high school track meet in 1906. He earned good grades in every subject except…
- Grace HopperGrace Hopper hung a clock on her office wall that ran counterclockwise, ticking backward through every meeting. "Humans are allergic to change," she once said. "They love to say, 'We've always done it this way.' I try to fight that. That's…