Curated playlist
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. His first words were not the solemn kind. "Whoopee! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but…
- 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 spaceflight. But what truly separates Lovell from the dozen men who did walk on the…
- 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 human being since. More than half a century later, those footprints in the…
- 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…
- 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 climbed into a spacecraft perched atop a Redstone rocket. He had been strapped into…
- 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 heard from the other. To enjoy a piano or a music player, he clamped his teeth…
- 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 different classes of NASA spacecraft: Gemini, the Apollo command module, the Apollo…
- Wally SchirraWally Schirra was the only astronaut to fly in all three of America's first crewed space programs: Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. That distinction alone would be enough to earn him a place in history. But the full arc of his life reaches…
- 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 at Missionary Ridge. He would go on to hold commands that no American soldier had…
- 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. He died on the 26th of May, 2018, at the age of 86. Between those two dates, he became only the fourth…
- 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. Floating back toward Earth after Apollo 14, Mitchell experienced what he would later…
- 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…
- 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 descended to the lunar surface at Taurus-Littrow valley, Evans circled silently…