Curated category
United States Navy officers
- Arthur E. BrysonArthur Earl Bryson Jr. was born on the 7th of October 1925, and he would come to be called the father of modern optimal control theory.
- Roger B. ChaffeeRoger Bruce Chaffee was thirty-one years old when he climbed into the Apollo 1 command module on the afternoon of the 27th of January, 1967.
- Johnny CarsonJohnny Carson stepped in front of a camera for the last time as host of The Tonight Show on the 22nd of May 1992, and three decades of American nights ended.
- 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…
- Neil ArmstrongNeil Armstrong set his left boot on the lunar surface at 02:56 UTC on the 21st of July 1969, and said seven words that an estimated 530 million people heard…
- 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…
- James TobinJames Tobin was born on the 5th of March, 1918, in Champaign, Illinois, the son of a journalist credited with inventing "Homecoming" at the University of…
- 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.
- L. Sprague de Camp"My own true name sounds more like a pseudonym than most pseudonyms do," L. Sprague de Camp said, explaining why he rarely used pen names.
- Joseph Francis SheaJoseph Francis Shea was born on the 5th of September, 1925, in the Bronx borough of New York City. He grew up as the eldest son in a working-class Irish…
- Richard F. Gordon Jr.Richard Francis Gordon Jr. was born in Seattle, Washington, on the 5th of October 1929, and he died 88 years later having orbited the Moon 45 times.
- James Iredell WaddellJames Iredell Waddell fired the last shots of the American Civil War from the deck of a Confederate warship in Arctic waters, months after the fighting had…
- George HalasGeorge Halas was born on the 2nd of February 1895 in Chicago, Illinois. He grew up in a home filled with Czech-Bohemian immigrants from Pilsen…
- Daniel Patrick MoynihanDaniel Patrick Moynihan shined shoes at Pennsylvania Station as a boy during the Great Depression, in the same building he would later spend decades fighting…
- Maxime FagetMaxime Allen Faget was the engineer who decided that a spacecraft returning from orbit should look nothing like an aircraft.
- Red AuerbachRed Auerbach lit a cigar on the bench while the game was still being played. It was his signal to the opposing team, to the crowd, to anyone watching: this…