Previously on this day

On the 21st July 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the Moon. When Neil first landed on the moon he is quoted as saying: “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” He said the Eagle has landed because the space craft they travelled in was called the Eagle.

The most famous saying from Neil Armstong being on the moon is when he first stepped down on to the moon, he declared: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

The activity on the moon was captured by TV cameras which were installed on the Eagle and turned on by Neil Armstrong once they landed. When he was on the moon Neil Armstrong took photographs and soil samples, he was then joined by his partner Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin the two collected data and jumped across the landscape, finally they planted the American Stars and Stripes flag and unveiled a plaque which read: “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon July 1969 AD. We came in peace for all mankind.”

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The Battle of Khe Sanh was conducted in northwestern Quang Tri Province, Republic of Vietnam between January 21 and April 8, 1968 during the Vietnam War. The combatants were elements of the United States III Marine Amphibious force, elements of the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), and two to three division-size elements of the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN).

The American command in Saigon initially believed that combat operations around Khe Sanh during the summer of 1967 were just part of a series of minor North Vietnamese offensives in the border regions. That appraisal was altered when it was discovered that PAVN was moving major forces into the area during the fall and winter. A build-up of Marine forces took place and actions around Khe Sanh commenced when the Marine base was isolated.

During a series of desperate actions that lasted 77 days, Khe Sanh Combat Base and the hilltop outposts around it were under constant North Vietnamese ground, artillery, mortar, and rocket attacks. During the battle, a massive aerial bombardment campaign was launched by the U.S. Air Force to support the Marine base. In March 1968, an overland relief expedition was launched by a combined Marine/Army/South Vietnamese task force that eventually broke through to the Marines at Khe Sanh.

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Elizabeth Short was an American woman who was the victim of a gruesome and much-publicized murder. Nicknamed the “Black Dahlia,” she was found severely mutilated on January 15, 1947 in Leimert Park, Los Angeles, California. The murder, which remains unsolved, has been the source of widespread speculation as well as several books and film adaptations.

Short was born in Hyde Park, Massachusetts and was raised in Medford by her mother. At age 19, she went to live with her father in Vallejo, California. For six months prior to her death, she remained in the L.A. area. During this time, she lived in several hotels, apartment buildings, rooming houses, and private homes, never staying anywhere for more than a few weeks. Her body was found in a vacant lot, severely mutilated, cut in half, and drained of blood. Her face was slashed from the corners of her mouth toward her ears.

Short received the nickname “Black Dahlia” by newspaper reporters covering the murder as a play on the then-current film The Blue Dahlia. The murder investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department was the largest since the murder of Marion Parker in 1927, and involved hundreds of officers borrowed from other law enforcement agencies. Hundreds of people were considered suspects and thousands were interviewed by police.

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The Human Be-In was a happening in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park on the afternoon and evening of January 14, 1967. It was a prelude to the city’s Summer of Love, which made the Haight-Ashbury district a household word as the center of an American counterculture and introduced the word “psychedelic” to suburbia.

The Human Be-In focused the key ideas of the 1960s counterculture: personal empowerment, cultural and political decentralization, communal living, ecological awareness, higher consciousness, and liberal political consciousness. The happening took its name from a chance remark by Michael Bowen made at the Love Pageant Rally. The Human Be-In was announced on the cover of the first issue of the San Francisco Chronicle as “A Gathering of the Tribes for a Human Be-In.”

The occasion was a new California law banning the use of the psychedelic drug LSD. Speakers included Dr. Timothy Leary, who set the tone with his famous phrase, “Turn on, tune in, drop out,” and poets like Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder. Music was provided by a host of local rock bands including Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead. No one was able to agree whether 20,000 or 30,000 people showed up.

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Common Sense was a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine and was first published anonymously on January 10, 1776 during the American Revolution. Common Sense presented the American colonists with an argument for independence from British rule at a time when the question of independence was still undecided.

Paine wrote and reasoned in a style that common people understood. Forgoing the philosophy and Latin references used by Enlightenment era writers, he structured Common Sense like a sermon and relied on Biblical references to make his case to the people. Paine began work on Common Sense in late 1775 under the working title of Plain Truth. With the help of Benjamin Rush, who suggested the title Common Sense and helped edit and publish, Paine developed his ideas into a 48-page pamphlet.

He published it anonymously because of its treasonous content. Common Sense sold as many as 120,000 copies in the first three months, 500,000 in the first year, and went through 25 editions in the first year alone. Paine donated his royalties from the pamphlet to George Washington’s Continental Army. Historian Gordon S. Wood described Common Sense as, “the most incendiary and popular pamphlet of the entire revolutionary era.”

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The disappearance of the Airborne Transport DC-3 airliner, NC16002 occurred near the end of a scheduled flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico to Miami, Florida. The aircraft carried 29 passengers and three crew members. No probable cause for the loss was determined by the official investigation and it remains unsolved.

The plane was captained by pilot Robert Linquist who informed local repair crewmen that a landing gear warning light was not functioning and that the aircraft batteries were discharged but was unwilling to delay the scheduled takeoff. The weather was fine with high visibility as it took off but it did not respond to subsequent calls from San Juan.

The Overseas Foreign Air Route Traffic Control Center at Miami heard routine transmissions from NC16002 sporadically throughout the night. Linquist reported he was 50 miles south of Miami but this transmission was reported at New Orleans and not Miami. The aircraft may have drifted off course 40-50 miles. Nothing further was heard from Linquist and the aircraft has never been found. In subsequent years, researchers into unexplained disappearances have included the flight among others said to have disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle.

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The Battle of Trenton took place during the American Revolutionary War after General George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware River north of Trenton, New Jersey. The dangerous crossing in bad weather allowed him to lead the main body of the Continental Army against Hessian soldiers garrisoned at Trenton.

After a brief struggle, nearly the entire Hessian force was captured with very little losses to the Americans. The battle boosted the Continental Army’s flagging morale and inspired re-enlistments. The Continental Army had previously suffered several defeats in New York and had been forced to retreat across New Jersey. Morale in the army was low and in an attempt to save the army and end the year on a positive note, Washington devised a plan to cross the Delaware River on Christmas night and surround the Hessian garrison.

Because the river was icy, the crossing was hazardous. Only Washington and 2,400 of his men made it  across the river as a result. The Americans pushed the Hessians back to the city and used artillery to break their lines – their resistance collapsed. Despite the small numbers, the battle’s effect was enormous throughout the colonies. With this victory, soldiers agreed to stay and new recruits came and joined the ranks.

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Howard Hughes was an American aviator, industrialist, film producer/director, philanthropist, and one of the wealthiest people in the world. He gained fame in the late 1920s as a maverick film producer, making big budget and often controversial films like Hell’s Angels and The Outlaw.

As an aviator, Hughes set multiple world air-speed records, built the Hughes H-1 Racer and H-4 “Hercules” aircraft, and acquired and expanded Trans World Airlines. He was a lifelong aircraft enthusiast, pilot and self-taught aircraft engineer. The H-1 Racer features a number of design innovations: it had a retractable landing gear and all the rivets and joints were set flush into the body of the aircraft to reduce drag. On July 10, 1938, Hughes set another record by completing a flight around the world in just 91 hours, beating the previous record by more than four days.

Despite his contributions to aeronautics and his other professional accomplishments, Hughes is perhaps most widely remembered for his eccentric behavior and reclusive lifestyle in later life, evidently caused in part by a worsening case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. He insisted on using tissues to pick up objects, so he could insulate himself from germs. Hughes died on April 5, 1976 while on an aircraft en route to a hospital in Houston.

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Bernhard Goetz was dubbed the “Subway Vigilante’ by the New York press and became a symbol of New Yorkers’ frustrations with a high crime rate when he shot four men intent on robbing him on the Seventh Avenue 2 express subway train in Manhattan. At the time of the shooting incident, he was self-employed, running an electronics repair business out of his apartment.

Four African American men boarded a downtown express train on a stated mission to steal money from video arcade machines in Manhattan. Goetz entered the same subway car at the 14^th Street station and sat down near the four men. They engaged in a brief conversation and proceed to block Goetz from the other passengers in the car. One of the men asked him for money in a threatening way.

Goetz pretended not to hear the man who then repeated his demand. Goetz rose from his seat, drew a .38 Special revolver and fired five shots, hitting all four men. All four men survived, though one was permanently paralyzed and suffered brain damage as a result of being shot. Goetz fled the scene, rented a car and drove to Vermont where he buried the gun. He turned himself in to Concord, New Hampshire police on December 31, 1984.

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The Boston Tea Party was an act of direct action by the American colonists against the British government in which they destroyed many crates of tea belonging to the British East India Company and dumped it in Boston Harbor. The incident has been seen as helping to spark the American Revolution and remains to this day one of the most iconic events in American history.

The Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Acts of 1767 angered colonists regarding British decisions on taxing the colonies. One of the protestors was John Hancock, a wealthy Bostonian, who organized a boycott of tea from China. Bostonians suspected the removal of the Tea Tax was simply another attempt by the British parliament to squash American freedom. The evening before the tea was due to landed, Captain Roach appealed to the Governor to allow his ship to leave without unloading the tea.

The Sons of Liberty, thinly disguised as either Mohawk or Narragansett Indians and armed with small hatchets and clubs, headed toward Griffin’s Warf, where lay Dartmouth, and the newly-arrived Beaver and Eleanor. Casks of tea were brought up from the hold of the deck, the casks were opened and the tea dumped overboard. By dawn, over 342 cases or 90,000 lbs of tea worth an estimated $1.87 million had been consigned to the waters of Boston Harbor.

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