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- July 2, 1953: Mark Hart, tour and session keyboardist/guitarist
for Crowded House and
Tim Finn and later a full-time member of
Crowded House, was born. He was the only member of the band from America as
opposed to New Zealand or Australia.
- July 2, 1978: Charon, the singular moon of tiny planet Pluto, was discovered
as Pluto was seen in silhouette against a distant star by astronomers. It was
a surprising discovery since the smallest planet's gravity was considered too
weak to hold a body in orbit - especially a body of the relative size of
Charon, which is nearly the same size as Pluto.
- July 3, 1935: Harrison Schmidt, Apollo 17 geological specialist - and the only
trained civilian scientist to visit the moon in the entire Apollo program -
was born. He later served a term on the Senate.
- July 4, 1054: Talk about fireworks! A supernova was observed on this date from
locations as far-reaching as China, the Middle East and Japan; it remained
visible at magnitudes visible to the naked eye for nearly two years. The dust
cloud hurled forth by that exploding star is now known as the Crab Nebula.
- July 7, 1919: Jon Pertwee, the third
Doctor Who and the first actor to play the
role in color from 1970
through 1974, was born. He died in 1996.
- July 7, 1979: Voyager 2 passed Jupiter at a distance of just under 400,000
miles.
- July 7, 1988: The Soviet Union launched the Phobos 1 space probe to land on the largest
moon of Mars to take surface soil samples. It met with the same fate as its
sister ship - see July 12 below.
- July 11: Craig Charles, Lister of
Red Dwarf fame, was born.
- July 11: And so was I, come to think
of it! (Take
a look at my Amazon.com wish list.)
- July 11, 1979: Skylab broke up in the Earth's atmosphere after six years of
vacancy. Some large chunks of Skylab survived re-entry and landed in
Australia without injuring anyone, though the panic preceeding the station's
fall to Earth was met with assurances that NASA would pay for any damage.
When Skylab was destroyed, no American astronaut had been launched for almost
exactly four years.
- July 12, 1988: The Phobos 2 probe was launched by the Soviet Union to undertake
a mission similar to that of Phobos 1. Contact with Phobos 1 was lost within
one month of its launch, and Phobos 2 fell silent in March 1989 after sending
back a handful of pictures of Mars' satellite Phobos.
- July 13, 1940: Patrick Stewart,
Star Trek's Captain Picard, was born.
- July 13, 1942: Harrison Ford, also known as
Star Wars' Han Solo, Indiana Jones,
and quite a few more characters these days.
- July 16: Jerry Doyle, Babylon
5's Security Chief Michael Garibaldi, was born.
- July 16, 1969: Apollo 11 was launched.
- July 16, 1994: Even more fireworks - on this date began the first few impacts
of fragments of shattered Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 into the planet Jupiter, a
widely-observed, not to mention explosive, event. Pieces of the comet
continued to smash into the giant planet for nearly a week, leaving dark
"bruises" in Jupiter's upper atmoshere, caused by the interaction of organic
substances in the comet's nucleus with the volatile Jovian sky.
- July 17, 1954: Babylon 5 creator
J. Michael Straczynski was born.
- July 17, 1975: The docking of the final Apollo capsule to a Soviet Soyuz
vehicle in orbit was successfully achieved as part of the Apollo-Soyuz Test
Project. The mission determined that either country could assist the other's
spacecraft in distress. Not until twenty years later was a similar maneuver
attempted when an American shuttle docked with the Russian Mir space station.
- July 18, 1966: Gemini 10 was launched. This seemingly routine flight marked an
important step on the way to the moon - the first controlled change of orbital
altitude by a manned spacecraft.
- July 20, 1969: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the moon when Apollo
11's lunar module became the first manned spacecraft to land on another body
in the solar system. They spent most of their stay on the moon inside their
lander, with only two hours on the surface by foot. Michael Collins piloted
the command module in lunar orbit.
- July 20, 1976: The Viking 1 space probe soft-landed on Mars and began taking
soil samples while its obiting delivery satellite observed the Martian
weather. Automatic tests conducted on Martian dirt by Viking 1 and the
identical Viking 2 at a different landing site revealed no signs of present
life.
- July 21, 1961: Gus Grissom was the second American to undertake a suborbital
flight in the Mercury program. When he prematurely blew the egress hatch
after splashing down in the ocean, Grissom's capsule sank to the bottom of
the ocean, but thankfully he had managed to escape.
- July 22, 1934: Oscar-winning actress Louise Fletcher, also
known as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's
megalomaniacal matriarch Kai Winn, was born.
- July 25, 1971: Chloe Annett, the second actress to play
Kristine Kochanski on the BBC's Red Dwarf, was
born.
- July 26, 1957: Nana Visitor,
Star Trek's Major Kira Nerys, was born.
- July 26, 1971: Apollo 15 was launched to investigate more mountainous regions
of the moon's surface. David Scott and Al Worden landed on the moon while
James Irwin piloted the command module orbiting the moon. This was the first
moon mission equipped with a lunar rover, as well as other apparatus designed
to allow extended stays and more intensive scientific study on the surface of
the moon.
- July 28, 1973: The second Skylab crew was launched. They spent 59 days in
orbit - a new record at the time - conducting biological and medical tests on
the behavior of the human body during extended space voyages.
- July 29, 1941: British actor David Warner was born.
- July 29, 1972: Wil Wheaton,
Star Trek's Wesley Crusher, was born.
- July 31, 1953: Hugh McDowell, ELO
cellist, was born.
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originally compiled for use in LogBook: The
'Zine
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