How many of the original Mercury astronauts actually made it to the Moon?

The middle of summer!

As August swelters on, we anticipate the unofficial end of summer, Labor Day.  I know summer really ends sometime late next month, but let’s face facts – summer is really over after Labor Day weekend.

What doesn’t end, of course, is trivia, and I just so happen to have a new assortment for you to view.  Have at it, and I hope you enjoy it!

Did you know …

… an Olympic athlete paused his race, but won it anyway?  During the 1928 Olympics, Australian rower Bobby Pearce (1905-1976) stopped his rowing mid-race to allow a family of ducks to pass.  This gave his opponent a lead of five lengths, but Pearce would not be denied a gold medal.  He poured it on during the last 1,000 meters and pulled ahead by 30 seconds to win the title, setting a record in the process.  (The ducks were grateful and sent a case of wine and some quackers.)

… while several states were once independent countries, one was a kingdom?  Hawaii was an independent kingdom from 1810 to 1895.  In Honolulu, one can see the former royal palace.  Iolani Palace was built in 1882 by King Kalakaua (1836-1891) and became a National Historic Landmark in 1962.  Kalakaua was the last king of Hawaii, and his sister and successor, Queen Lili’uokalani (1838-1917), was the last monarch.  She ruled until the monarchy was overthrown in 1893, which led to the islands’ annexation by the United States in 1898.  Additional trivia note:  Lili’uokalani was something of a songwriter.  You’ve heard at least one of her compositions –  the classic “Aloha Oe.”  (Wonder if her crown had a grass skirt?)

… only one language requires the capitalization of all nouns in writing?  That language is German.  All nouns must be capitalized or your sentence is grammatically incorrect in that language.  (Jawohl!)

… one of the classic stories of childhood isn’t as old as you might think?  Most children are familiar with the wonderful story of Pinocchio, the wooden puppet who longs to be a real boy.  But the story has only been around a century or so.  Pinocchio first appeared in print in 1881, serialized in a children’s magazine, before being published as a book in 1883.  It was written by Italian author Carlo Collodi (born Carlo Lorenzini, 1826-1890).  (If I’m lying about that, may my nose grow!)

… only one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts actually went to the Moon?  Project Mercury, which was the first U.S. program to put humans into space, operated from 1961 to 1963.  The original seven astronauts – Scott Carpenter (1925-2013), Gordon Cooper (1927-2004), John Glenn (1921-2016), Virgil “Gus” Grissom (1926-1967), Wally Schirra (1923-2007), Alan Shepard (1923-1998), and Donald “Deke” Slayton (1924-1993) – were military test pilots who were selected for the hazardous duty out of thousands of applicants.  By the time the Apollo missions to land on the Moon were underway, however, all seven were off flight status – Glenn and Carpenter had left NASA, Grissom was killed in the Apollo 1 fire, Schirra and Cooper had fallen from favor with NASA management, and Shepard and Slayton were grounded for medical reasons.  But by the time the crew of Apollo 14 was selected, Shepard had been returned to flight status, and he was selected to command that mission.  Thus, the first American into space became the only Mercury astronaut to walk on the Moon.  Additional trivia note:  Most accounts say that, had he lived, Grissom would have been selected as the first man to set foot on the Moon.  NASA management wanted a Mercury astronaut to have that honor, but when the crew for the first manned landing was selected, none of the Mercury astronauts were available.  Most believe that Grissom would have been the only one on still with the agency and on flight status had he survived.

… Paul Revere wasn’t the only “midnight rider” to warn of the British?  On April 26, 1777, Sybil Ludington (1761-1839), the 16-year-old daughter of a Colonial militia colonel, rode all night on horseback to alert militia forces in Putnam County, New York of the burning of Danbury, Connecticut.  Ludington was called a “heroine of the American Revolution,” though her ride did not receive anything close to the publicity given the ride by Revere (1735-1818) two years earlier.  Ludington’s ride was about twice as long as Revere’s ride, as well.  (Longfellow never wrote a poem about her, that’s for sure.)

… the first person to put wheels on an office chair was also the man who developed the theory of evolution?  Charles Darwin (1809-1882) placed cast-iron bed legs with casters on them on his office chair so he could get around his laboratory with greater ease.  Historians tell us Darwin’s makeshift mobility was the first known office chair on wheels.  (And I, for one, am very grateful he did that!)

… the Sun consumes about four million tons of hydrogen every second?  Sounds like a lot, I know, but overall it’s just a trifle.  Scientists estimate the Sun will run out of hydrogen to consume in about four billion years.  The hydrogen is turned into helium.  (And over the millennia, the Sun has acquired a squeaky voice.)

… the largest species of parrot in the world cannot fly?  The kakapo of New Zealand, also known as the owl parrot, is a flightless bird that measures up to 25 inches in length and weighs up to nine pounds.  It is a critically endangered species, and there are only about 250 of them left in the world.  They live on an island off the coast of New Zealand and are safe from predators, even though they spend a lot of their time hiding from now-extinct giant eagles.  (They didn’t get the memo about the giant eagles being extinct, it seems.)

Now … you know!