The first food eaten on the moon was a communion wafer.
A few minutes after Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong landed on the moon they sent a message back asking for a moment’s silence. In this time, Aldrin, an elder in his local Presbyterian Church, had a little communion ceremony of his own, reading scripture and taking the sacrament.
In his own words: “I ate the tiny Host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks for the intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility. It was interesting for me to think: The very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements.”
Jacobs Field, the former home of the Cleveland Indians baseball team, was immediately nicknamed “the Jake” upon its opening in April 1994. President Bill Clinton threw out the first pitch on Opening Day. The ballpark was renamed Progressive Field after Progressive Insurance bought the naming rights in 2008.
Progressive Field has an official capacity of below 35,000 fans, one of only top ballparks in the major leagues with a capacity under 35K (though they can accomodate more fans in standing room only.) Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays, now lists its capacity at just 25,000.
Nine Major League Baseball stadiums do not have corporate naming rights deals: Angel Stadium, Dodger Stadium, Fenway Park, Kauffman Stadium, Marlins Park, Nationals Park, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Wrigley Field, and Yankee Stadium.
MLB baseball is celebrating Apollo 11’s 50th anniversary by holding “Apollo at the Park” events at some baseball stadiums. The Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum is celebrating the 50th anniversary by placing 15 replica statues of Neil Armstrong’s iconic spacesuit in MLB ballparks.
There were no space missions named Apollo 2 and Apollo 3. According to NASA’s history, the never-launched flight of Apollo 1, the tragic AS-204 accident that took the lives of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee “would be officially recorded as Apollo 1, the ‘first manned Apollo Saturn flight — failed on ground test.’ AS-201, AS-202, and AS-203 would not be renumbered in the ‘Apollo’ series, and the next mission would be Apollo 4.”
Former NASA astronauts John Glenn and Harrison Schmitt were both elected to the US Senate, the former as a Democrat from Ohio and the latter a Republican from New Mexico. Retired astronaut Mark Kelly recently announced that he too would seek election to the Senate, in his case as a Democrat from Arizona. He is the husband of former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, also a Democrat of Arizona.
Singer and television host Kathie Lee Gifford rose to prominence on the TV talk show Live! with Regis and Kathie Lee, which she co-hosted with Regis Philbin from 1986 until 2000. Kathie Lee was married to former football star Frank Gifford (who was 23 years her senior) from 1986 until his death in 2015.
Apollo 11 used slow-scan television incompatible with broadcast TV, so Neil Armstrong’s first step on the moon was displayed on a special monitor and a conventional TV camera viewed this monitor, significantly reducing the quality of the picture. The signal was received at Goldstone in the US, but with better fidelity by Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station near Canberra in Australia. Minutes later the feed was switched to the more sensitive Parkes radio telescope in Australia.
Canberra is the capital of Australia, but, with a population of about 457,000, is only the country’s 8th-largest city. There are five cities in Australia that have a population of over one million: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide.
“The Dish”, The Parkes Radio Telescope in Parkes, Australia, was built in 1961 and was declared a National Engineering Landmark by the nonprofit organization, the Institution of Engineers Australia. Its scientific contributions over the decades led the ABC* to describe it as “the most successful scientific instrument ever built in Australia” after 50 years of operation.
For Apollo 11, when Buzz Aldrin switched on the TV camera on the Lunar Module, three tracking antennas received the signals simultaneously: the 64-metre Goldstone antenna in California, the 26-metre antenna at Honeysuckle Creek near Canberra in Australia, and the 64-metre dish at Parkes. In the first few minutes of the broadcast, NASA alternated between the signals being received from its two stations at Goldstone and Honeysuckle Creek, searching for the best quality picture. A little under nine minutes into the broadcast, the TV was switched to the Parkes signal. The quality of the TV pictures from Parkes was so superior that NASA stayed with Parkes as the source of the TV for the remainder of the 2.5-hour broadcast.
Note-1: “The Dish” (Australian movie, 2000’, starring Sam Neill and Patrick Warburton, was the top grossing Australian film in Australia. I highly recommend the movie, it is thoroughly enjoyable.
Note-2: Goldstone is in California’s Mojave Desert, near Barstow CA. Its Visitors Center is open almost daily and is free to visit. I’ll be passing through and plan to stop in on, as it turns out, July 20th — 50 years to the day that Armstrong and Aldrin set foot on the moon.
(ETA) * — ABC = Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Patrick Warburton, over the course of a long career, has played or voiced an offbeat superhero (The Tick), a space ranger (Buzz Lightyear of Star Command), a sorceress’s assistant (The Emperor’s New Groove) and a stolid but dim boyfriend (Seinfeld), among other roles.
In The Dish (2000), Patrick Warburton starred as Al Burnett, an American technician from NASA visiting to check the dish’s operations during the moon landing. Although based on true events, the film uses fictional characters and alters historical details for dramatic effect. NASA’s Honeysuckle Creek and Goldstone stations both had the signal first, but Parkes’ signal was used soon after the beginning of the moonwalk. No power failure occurred, there was no friction with the NASA representatives (of whom there were several, not just one), and Prime Minister John Gorton visited Honeysuckle Creek, not Parkes. They did, however, operate in very high winds gusting to 68 mph at 60 degrees inclination, risking damage to the dish and even injury to themselves to keep the antenna pointed at the Moon during the moonwalk.
“Black Is Black” was released in 1966 as the debut single by the Spanish rock band Los Bravos.The song reached number two in the UK, number four in the U.S., and number one in Canada, making Los Bravos the first Spanish rock band to have an international hit single.
Robert Henry Lawrence Jr. (1935-1967) was our first African-American astronaut. In June, 1967 he was selected by the USAF as an astronaut in the Air Force’s Manned Orbital Laboratory (MOL) program, thus becoming our first black astronaut. But he was killed in the crash of an F-104 Starfighter at Edwards Air Force Base, California, on December 8, 1967. Had he lived, he likely would have been among the MOL astronauts who became NASA Astronaut Group 7 after MOL’s cancellation, all of whom flew on the Space Shuttle. NASA Astronaut Group 7 included Robert Crippen, and Richard H. Truly who would go on to be NASA Administrator after his space flight career.
(And this play links Annie’s post to the trivia dominoes…)
In play: Not only was Sally Ride the first American female astronaut in space, she was the first known LGBT astronaut. After Ride’s death, her obituary revealed that her partner of 27 years was Tam O’Shaughnessy, a professor emerita of school psychology at San Diego State University and childhood friend, who met her when both were aspiring tennis players.
