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- April 1: Grace Lee Whitney, the original
Star Trek's Yeoman Rand, was
born.
- April 1, 1960: The world's first weather satellite was launched by the United
States, though it operated for just under three months.
- April 2, 1914: Sir Alec Guinness,
Star Wars' Ben Kenobi (among
a multitude of roles in other films and productions), was born.
- April 5, 1955: Actor Casey Biggs, also known as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's Cardassian heavy
Damar, was born.
- April 4, 1983: The space shuttle Challenger took to orbit for the first time
with a crew of four.
- April 4, 1997: Space shuttle Columbia launches on mission number
STS-83.
- April 5, 1991: Space shuttle Atlantis lifted off, en route to deploy
- and then retrieve, repair, and re-launch - the Gamma Ray Observatory
sattelite.
- April 6, 1937: Billy Dee Williams,
Star Wars' Lando Calrissian
and later a psychic fiend, erm, friend...was born.
- April 6, 1973: Pioneer 11 was launched, following Pioneer 10's footsteps to
Jupiter and then going on to take the first close-up observations of Saturn
in 1979.
- April 6, 1984: Space shuttle Challenger, with mission commander (and
future NASA administrator) Robert Crippen aboard, launches. It is also the
first space flight for Francis Scobee, who was to have been the mission
commander on Challenger's final flight in 1986.
- April 7, 1990: Ron Evans, Apollo 17 lunar module pilot, died.
- April 7, 1977: Having received an offer to join
Split Enz after guitarist Alastair
Riddell turned down a similar invitation, Neil
Finn flew to London to become an official member of his
older brother's band. Neil eventually
became the lead singer and guitarist for Split Enz shortly before disbanding
it to form Crowded House in 1986.
- April 7, 1984: On its fifth flight into orbit, the space shuttle Challenger is
used to deploy the first LDEF (long-duration exposure facility) satellite, and
later, Challenger's crew recovers, repairs and redeploys two wayward
satellites, the first such repair job in space.
- April 8, 1993: Space shuttle Discovery is launched; among the crew's
experiments include space-based tests of amateur radio, and they use this
means to contact the Russian Mir space station.
- April 9, 1994: Space shuttle Endeavour lifts off on mission number
STS-59.
- April 11, 1970: Apollo 13
was launched; well on its way to the moon two days later, the mission and
its three crewmen were endangered by the explosion of an oxygen tank in the
service module behind the command capsule. With both the Earthbound engineers
and the resourceful crew improvising at top speed, the astronauts returned
safely to Earth on April 17.
- April 12, 1961: Mankind left the confines of Earth; Yuri Gagarin was launched
on his historic single orbit around the planet aboard Vostok 1.
- April 12, 1981: The first American space shuttle is launched; Columbia is
manned on its maiden flight by Gemini/Apollo veteran John Young and future
NASA chief administrator Robert Crippen.
- April 12, 1985: Senator Jake Garn is among the crew members aboard
space shuttle Discovery, which launched on this date.
- April 13, 1951: Peter Davison, the fifth
Doctor Who from 1982 to 1984, was
born.
- April 14, 1977: A Slayer is born - or at least the actress who plays
Buffy, Sarah Michelle Gellar, was.
- April 16, 1972: Apollo 16 was launched; it was the next-to-last manned trip to
the moon to date. The crew consisted of John Young, Ken Mattingly and Charles
Duke.
- April 16, 1972: The Electric Light
Orchestra - then consisting of Move alumnus Roy Wood, future ELO
leader Jeff Lynne, drummer Bev Bevan, brass
player Bill Hunt, keyboardist Richard Tandy, violinist Wlf Gibson, and cellists
Hugh McDowell and Andy Craig - made its concert debut at the Greyhound Pub in
London. The first ELO gig was a technical disaster.
- April 17, 1947: Scottish actor Ian McDiarmid, who played the
evil Emperor (and his younger version, Chancellor Palpatine) in most of the
Star Wars films, was born.
- April 17, 1967: The Surveyor 3 robot probe was launched to the moon to take
pictures and soil samples; in late 1969, it was the first space probe to be
"recovered" when Apollo 12 astronauts visited Surveyor 3, which was within
walking distance of their own landing site.
- April 17, 1998: Space shuttle Columbia launched on a mission to
conduct the first studies dedicated to the effects of a zero-G environment on
the nervous system with the Neurolab module.
- April 18, 1949: Avery
Brooks, Star Trek's Captain
Sisko, was born.
- April 18, 1956: Eric Roberts, star of numerous films and television shows who
played the part of the Master in the (so far) final televised
Doctor Who adventure, was born.
- April 19, 1971: The first experimental space station was launched, the Soviets'
Salyut 1.
- April 19, 1981: Canadian actor Hayden Christensen, Anakin
Skywalker from Star Wars Episode
II and Episode
III, was born.
- April 19, 1982: The final space station in the Soviet Union's Salyut series,
Salyut 7, was launched.
- April 20, 1939: George Takei, Star Trek's Sulu, was born.
- April 20, 1951: Louise Jameson, famous for playing scantily-clad
Doctor Who sidekick Leela, was
born.
- April 23, 1564: William Shakespeare was born. He wrote quite a few things.
- April 23, 1967: The first flight of the three-man Soyuz space vehicle was
launched from the U.S.S.R. with a single occupant, Vladimir Komarov, aboard;
after a brief but successful flight, Soyuz 1 returned to Earth at over 400mph
when its braking parachutes did not deploy. Komarov was killed instantly.
Paralleling the tragic incident in which the three-man crew of Apollo 1 had
burned to death on the launch pad three months earlier, the Soyuz capsule was
re-evaluated extensively before another manned launch was permitted.
- April 24, 1975: William Hartnell, the original
Doctor Who from 1963 to 1966, died
of multiple sclerosis.
- April 24, 1990: Space shuttle Discovery, on its 10th flight, carries
the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit, though its first pictures turned out to
be far less than perfect thanks to botched optics.
- April 25: Peter Jurasik, Babylon
5's Ambassador Londo Mollari, was born.
- April 25, 1990: The space shuttle Discovery launched the Earth-orbiting Hubble
Space Telescope. Shortly after it becomes operational, the Telescope is found
to have flawed optics and only image correction software prevents it from
being completely unusable until repairs are carried out late in 1993.
- April 26, 1993: Space shuttle Columbia lifts off, carrying the
second German Spacelab laboratory module in its cargo bay.
- April 28, 1991: Space shuttle Discovery lifts off on mission number
STS-39.
- April 29, 1955: Kate Mulgrew,
Star Trek's Captain Janeway, was
born.
- April 29, 1985: Space shuttle Challenger lifts off, with the
Spacelab 3 experiment module in its cargo bay.
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Information
originally compiled for use in LogBook: The
'Zine
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