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- June 1, 1940: Rene
Auberjonois, Star Trek's
Odo, was born.
- June 2, 1930: Charles Conrad, Gemini 5 and 11 astronaut and commander of the
Apollo 12 moon shot and the first Skylab crew, was born.
- June 3, 1965: Gemini 4 was launched; it is during this mission that Ed White
made the first American spacewalk. White, along with Gus Grissom and rookie
Roger Chaffee, died in the Apollo 1 fire in 1967.
- June 3, 1966: Gemini 9 was launched, though its major experiment - a spacewalk
using an early predecessor of the "jet packs" now commonplace aboard shuttle
missions - was scrapped due to technical problems.
- June 6, 1932: David Scott, veteran of the Gemini 8, Apollo 9 and Apollo 15
flights, was born.
- June 6, 1971: Mankind occupied its first space station. Three Soviet
cosmonauts boarded Salyut 1, checked its systems and returned to Earth. When
ground crews opened the Soyuz return vehicle, it was discovered that Georgi
Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsayev died when a faulty vent
opened and allowed their air to escape during re-entry. Investigations were
conducted before another launch was allowed, and the first space station had
burned up in the atmosphere before the Soviets returned to space again.
- June 7, 1952: Liam Neeson, who played Jedi Knight Qui-Gon Jinn
in Star Wars Episode I,
was born.
- June 8, 1625: Astronomer Giovanni Cassini was born. He studied the rings of
Saturn in what was considered tremendous detail in the 17th century, including
the discovery of the "Cassini Division," a dark band in the rings presumed to
be a gap with no solid material. One trajectory considered for the 20th
century Pioneer 11 space probe in its mission as the first visitor to Saturn
would have taken the fragile probe through Cassini's Division, at which point
Pioneer would've found out in the worst possible way that the "gap" contains
as much rocky material as the rest of the ring - comprised of dark particles!
A follow-up mission Saturn is in the planning stages - this time a robot probe
named, of all things, Cassini.
- June 8, 1936: Former teen heartthrob, Time Tunnel star and Deep Space Nine's crooner-in-residence James
Darren was born.
- June 8, 1943: Colin Baker,
the sixth and "shortest-lived" Doctor
Who, was born.
- June 8, 1975: The Soviet Venera 9 probe landed on Venus and returned the first
pictures ever taken of the planet's surface; the crushing pressures on Venus
completely destroyed Venera 9 within an hour.
- June 9, 1981: Natalie Portman, Queen Amidal/Padmè and
who knows who else in the second Star
Wars trilogy, was born.
- June 11, 1999: DeForest Kelley, known and loved by millions for
his role as Star Trek's Dr. McCoy, died
after several months of battling cancer.
- June 12, 1967: The Venera 4 probe managed to return data on the atmosphere of
Venus but stopped sending information only 15 miles from the surface.
- June 16, 1963: Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in orbit aboard the
Soviet Vostok 6 mission; she was the last woman in orbit until 1983.
- June 18, 1898: Artist M.C. Escher was born.
- June 18, 1973: Actor Roger Delgado, who originated the role of the villainous
Master in Doctor Who in
1971, was killed when his chaffeur-driven
car crashed while he was shooting a film on location in Turkey. His death
caused such sadness among his fellow Who participants that close friend Jon
Pertwee decided to leave the show a year later, as did friend and producer
Barry Letts.
- June 18, 1983: Space shuttle Challenger is launched; included in its crew is
Sally Ride, the first female American astronaut and the first woman in space
since Valentina Tereshkova's 1963 flight.
- June 21, 1969: The final black
and white episode of Doctor Who
- and the last to star Patrick Troughton - was transmitted in England.
- June 22, 1956: Tim Russ, Star
Trek: Voyager's Vulcan Tuvok, was born.
- June 22, 1958: Cult favorite Bruce Campbell, star of the
Evil Dead movies, Xena and
Hercules, as well as his own short-lived shows Brisco County Jr. and Jack Of All
Trades, was born. Hail to the king, baby!
- June 25, 1894: Hermann Oberth, German rocket scientist was born.
- June 25, 1952: Tim Finn,
lead singer and founding member of Split Enz
and later a solo artist and one-time member of
Crowded House, was born.
- June 27, 1997: Jacques Cousteau, pioneer of many frontiers above and
beneath the oceans of the world, died.
- June 28, 1951: Lalla Ward, alias the second incarnation of Romana from
Doctor Who, and one-time Mrs.
Tom Baker, was born.
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Information
originally compiled for use in LogBook: The
'Zine
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