I'm posting this a little after midnight, but May 5th was the forty-fifth anniversary of Alan Shepard's historic flight. And I have to get to bed for about four hours sleep so I can catch a 6 AM flight to Detroit, where my niece is having her first communion this weekend. Blogging will be light. Thoughts about the conference upon return.

Uh, Rand, it was Alan Shepard's suborbital flight. Post-midnight postings are hazardous to your image!

I remember it well. Willie Mays, who the week prior (30 April) had just hit 4 homers in one game at Milwaukee, was a guest on the CBS network's Ed Sullivan Show. During the brief guest appearance, Willie told Mr. Sullivan he wasn't a hero. Pointing upward Willie said, "Those guys up there are the heros," referring to Shepard, who just completed his flight, Gagarin, and all those astronauts and cosmonauts preparing for their missions.

It would be several years before the US caught up with the USSR, but only one year for my Giants to overtake the Dodgers in '62 for the NL pennant, only to lose the series in 7...to the Yankees!

A coincidence? Finally looking at today's date (duh!) I realize it is Mays' 75th birthday.

tempus fugit

Rand, I'm shocked you could get Freedom 7 that wrong.I agree with Jim O(berg?). Watch those post-midnight postings.

Post-midnight, post-beer make for bad posts...

Fortunately, my commenters are smarter than me.

I have just finished reading "Light This Candle", by Neal Thompson, a fine bio of Shepard. He was a difficult man to deal with at times, so the book says, but my goodness, what a determined, brave and brilliant pilot he was. Gritty as the New Hampshire he came from.

Al Shepard was the best of all of them, in my view.