Curated category
Recipients of the Navy Distinguished Service Medal
- Pete ConradPete Conrad stepped off the Lunar Module's ladder on the 19th of November 1969, paused on the landing pad, and jumped down onto the Moon.
- Jim LovellJim Lovell flew to the Moon twice and never set foot on it. That distinction alone would make him one of the most unusual figures in the history of human…
- Gene CernanGene Cernan stepped off the lunar surface on the 14th of December 1972, climbed the ladder of the Apollo 17 lunar module, and has not been followed by any…
- 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…
- Alan ShepardAlan Bartlett Shepard Jr. awoke at 01:10 on the 5th of May 1961, ate a breakfast of orange juice, a filet mignon wrapped in bacon, and scrambled eggs, then…
- Thomas EdisonThomas Edison kept his own deafness a mystery, inventing elaborate false stories about how he lost his hearing. He was completely deaf in one ear and barely…
- John Young (astronaut)John Watts Young flew in space six times, walked on the Moon, and commanded the first Space Shuttle mission. No other astronaut in history flew in four…
- Wally SchirraWally Schirra was the only astronaut to fly in all three of America's first crewed space programs: Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.
- Douglas MacArthurDouglas MacArthur was born on the 26th of January 1880 at Little Rock Barracks in Arkansas, the son of a Union Army captain who had earned the Medal of Honor…
- Alan BeanAlan LaVern Bean was born on the 15th of March, 1932, in Wheeler, Texas, a small town in the northeastern corner of the Texas Panhandle.
- Edgar MitchellEdgar Dean Mitchell was the sixth person to walk on the Moon, and on his way home, something happened to him that no training could have prepared him for.
- Walter Bedell SmithWalter Bedell Smith was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on the 5th of October 1895. He grew up as the elder of two sons to William Long Smith and Ida Francis…
- Ronald Evans (astronaut)Ronald Ellwin Evans Jr. is the last human being to orbit the Moon alone. On the 14th of December 1972, while his crewmates Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt…