Yeah, That Happened: Topics in History

[Deleted]

While not exactly on this day the build up for the 50th Anniversary of the Moon Landings has started I wasn’t born then so no memories from me!
I do like this article by Fintan O Toole of his memories of then from this side of the world.
They went to the moon; we discovered the Earth

[divasahm]

Jul 14, 2019 10:28:26 GMT -4 @fitz said:

While not exactly on this day the build up for the 50th Anniversary of the Moon Landings has started I wasn’t born then so no memories from me!
I do like this article by Fintan O Toole of his memories of then from this side of the world.
They went to the moon; we discovered the Earth

Lovely article, @fitz!

I was five years old, and we watched at my grandmother's house because she had the biggest TV. My little brothers were too little to watch in the middle of the night, but I remember dozing in my dad's lap and him waking me up to watch the hatch open, and Neil Armstrong stepping onto the moon. I also remember Walter Cronkite smiling and laughing--he was so excited!

Seeing all the replays this past week has really heightened those memories--I asked my mom if what I remembered was true, and she said yes. It was the first thing my grandmother had taken an interest in since my grandfather died the previous fall, and it was really special to watch together as a family. I wish my dad were here to enjoy all the commemorations...

Also, my dad's grandmother and other family members wouldn't watch it because it was fake, and they never believed that it actually happened. Great-grandmother also watched the live wrestling matches out of Shreveport as religiously as she attended church on Sunday, but those? THOSE WERE REAL, Y'ALL...

[ladytrentham]

Anybody remember Heath Kits?

My Dad was determined to watch the moon landing coverage in color. (Yes, he knew the moon itself would be B&W.). He was an electrical engineer who had a growing family and couldn't afford to outright buy a color TV with my little brother on the way. So he started in 1965. I spent many happy hours "helping" him at his workbench as he spent his after dinner/after work hours assembling various Heath Kits to build the tools he would need. Finally in early spring 1969 the big Heath Kit box arrived. I was the only kid in the first grade who knew what a "cathode ray tube" was. At the end of June we were the first people in the neighborhood to have a color TV. A 24" screen. BECAUSE MY DAD BUILT ONE!

Added bonus: suddenly I was the most popular kid around after school. Holy cow, Gilligan's Island was in color. My new friends tried coming around in the morning to watch Captain Kangaroo in color, but Mom put her foot down.

[ratscabies]

I never built any Heath Kits, but I remember them and some others that did the same sort of thing. Paia used to sell kits to build a synthesizer in the back of Guitar Player magazine.

In what I could only ever see as a gloriously funny bit of snark, there was a pair of old, analog-needle level meters added (probably by the tech at the studio Warner Brothers owned) to my old mixing console that had a Heath Kit logo under them. (Warners paid over $100k for that mixer when it was new. In 1977. WAY out of the Heath Kit line!)

[chonies]

I had heard about the Soviet Luna program in a few places (including the Air and Space museum) but this morning I looked it up in my library's NY Times archive. It wasn't a secret at all--there were a ton of articles about contacting Moscow to plan the routes, concern about the possibilities of simulataneous orbits, etc. Really interesting.

[Deleted]

A shoutout to some of the unsung women behind the scenes 50years ago.
Without these women, man would not have walked on the moon

[ratscabies]

I ALMOST decided to use Gil Scott Heron’s “Whitey On the Moon” for walk out music tonight, but instead here is this.

[madangela]

And there’s this:

m.youtube.com/watch?v=BHIo6qwJarI#

[kateln]

Jul 14, 2019 22:45:32 GMT -4 ladytrentham said:

Anybody remember Heath Kits?

My Dad was determined to watch the moon landing coverage in color. (Yes, he knew the moon itself would be B&W.). He was an electrical engineer who had a growing family and couldn't afford to outright buy a color TV with my little brother on the way. So he started in 1965. I spent many happy hours "helping" him at his workbench as he spent his after dinner/after work hours assembling various Heath Kits to build the tools he would need. Finally in early spring 1969 the big Heath Kit box arrived. I was the only kid in the first grade who knew what a "cathode ray tube" was. At the end of June we were the first people in the neighborhood to have a color TV. A 24" screen. BECAUSE MY DAD BUILT ONE!

Added bonus: suddenly I was the most popular kid around after school. Holy cow, Gilligan's Island was in color. My new friends tried coming around in the morning to watch Captain Kangaroo in color, but Mom put her foot down.

My grandfather was a local DC celeb and television personality. My mom remembers her family was the first on the block to have a TV at all, and one of the first--years later--to have a color TV.

[Deleted]

These are really lovely 2 new Irish stamps to mark 50 years of Thin Lizzy
I’ve always liked Jim Fitzpatrick’s artwork. I pick a few of these when I can.
Also interesting I don’t think I’ve seen his daughters since they were little.