Dec 12, 1953: Chuck Yeager piloted Bell X-1A to Mach 2.44 at an altitude of 74,700 feet, a new record for piloted aircraft at the time. After reaching Mach 2.44, the X-1A tumbled out of control, twice reaching 8 Gs. Yeager recovered from inverted spin and landed the aircraft.
December 12, 1955: British engineer Christopher Cockerell patented the 1st hovercraft. The first known design for a hovercraft was made by Emmanuel Swedenborg as far back as 1716, but dismissed as impractical. Sir John Thornycroft produced models in the 1870s, but as the internal combustion engine had not yet been invented, he lacked a suitable power source. In 1955 Sir Christopher Cockerell (1910-1999) filed his first patent for a vehicle carried on an air-filled cushion, and in 1959 the SR-N1 became the first practical hovercraft. It used a gas turbine engine to power a large aircraft propeller, which drew air into a space beneath the craft. The air cushion was contained by a rubber skirt, and a second propeller moved the vehicle forward. Hovercraft have been successfully utilized as ferries, assault craft, and survey vessels.
The 1st commercial hovercraft, SR:N1 (Saunders-Roe Nautical 1), was built by Saunders Roe and successfully crossed the English Channel from Calais to Dover in just over two hours on 25 July 1959 with Cockerell on board.
NRDC Saunders Roe Nautical 1 - SRN1 (James' Hovercraft Site)
SR.N1 | The Hovercraft Museum
The 1962 Christmas classic "Do You Hear What I Hear?" was inspired by the Cuban Missile Crisis. But did you know Robert Goulet's version was co-songwriter Noël Regney's favorite interpretation.
NY Times (archived)
Noël Regney (born Léon Schlienger; 19 August 1922 – 22 November 2002), was a French World War II veteran and songwriter, best known for...
Do You Hear What I Hear? (1968)
Léon Schlienger, written backwards, is Noël Regnei (-lhcS). He grew up Catholic, but later became a Unitarian Universalist. He was drafted into the Nazi army despite being a Frenchman like many other "Malgré-nous". As an Alsatian, he spoke the German dialect Alsatian as fluently as French. It is said that he soon deserted, joined a group of French Resistance fighters, and became a double agent working for the French. He led a party of Nazis into an ambush, was shot in the arm, but survived. Eventually, while touring the United States, accompanying Lucienne Boyer, contemporary of Édith Piaf, he met his first wife pianist/composer Gloria Shayne with whom in 1962, he composed the Christmas song "Do You Hear What I Hear?" He had Pick's disease, a degenerative brain illness that causes dementia.
Wiki | Noel Regney, songwriter, 80
Dec 12, 1961: a Thor-Agena-B rocket with a special payload lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The launch of the reconnaissance satellite Discoverer 36 was considered routine, except that a piggyback passenger was aboard — Amateur Radio’s first satellite, OSCAR-1. (Orbiting Satellites Carrying Amateur Radio)
The uniqueness of the OSCAR-1 spacecraft was not only that itwas built by amateurs, for only $68 dollars and only about four years after the launch of Sputnik-1, but that it was the world’s first piggyback satellite and the world’s first private non-government spacecraft.
Immediately following the launch of OSCAR-1, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson honored it with a congratulatory telegram to the group sponsoring this momentous event in the history of Amateur Radio. It read:
“For me this project is symbolic of the type of freedom for which this country stands — freedom of enterprise and freedom of participation on the part of individuals throughout the world.”
OSCAR I operated for nearly 20 days, testing radio reception from space. During that time, thousands of radio operators in 28 different countries detected the satellite's simple "Hi" morse code message. To this day, many organizations identify their Morse-transmitting satellites with "HI", which also indicates laughter in amateur telegraphy like LOL.
Launch mass: 10.0 kilograms (22.0 lb)
Dimensions: 15.2 by 25.4 by 33 centimeters (6.0 in × 10.0 in × 13.0 in)
To get the project started, they called a series of high-level meetings of the members of the Project OSCAR group, the ARRL, representatives of the U.S. Air Force and the Lockheed Missiles and Space Company in Sunnyvale, California. At the time, Lance Ginner worked for Lockheed, having begun in January 1960 as an “A” Technician working in the Agena A and B space vehicle checkout complex. He was responsible for designing and building test aids to facilitate final systems checkout prior to shipment to Vandenberg Air Force Base for launch. The following year he advanced to a salaried position as a test conductor in satellite subsystems and systems level checkout. It was then that he became aware of Project OSCAR through meeting Chuck Townes and Nick Marshall, both of whom were also employed by Lockheed.
In an interview, Ginner answered a question about the most challenging aspects in the first OSCARs:
‘Getting the early OSCAR satellites approved for launch was a highly political process. I was a 21 year old just starting out in the field and was tremendously impressed by the talents of the OSCAR Board of Directors. The challenges the board faced in obtaining the permissions from the various government agencies and Lockheed were enormous. We had to keep in mind that ejectable sub-satellites were unknown at the time. And, convincing the various agencies that this ‘honor’ should go to a home built satellite with no official credentials was seen as a big risk. A premature release of the OSCAR satellite would keep the Agena satellite from deploying its booster adapter and would be a catastrophic end to the main mission. There were numerous meetings with government and military representatives, including many well-connected hams.
These discussions and the creation of the OSCAR ‘White Paper,’ helped establish the political and technical credibility we needed to obtain launch permission. The bureaucratic efforts probably exceeded those required to build the satellite.
“There were certainly technical risks in space hardware. In 1961, there were no transistors that would put out any real power at 144 MHz. We ended up using a prototype Fairchild part that was not even on the market. In those days, you did not have someone saying, ‘you can’t do it that way,’ because no one had ever done it before!"
OSCAR-1 Launched (PDF) | Project Oscar
December 12, 1966: Barney Hill was on an episode of To Tell the Truth. Will the Real Barney Hill Please Stand Up?
Dec 12, 1972: During the first Apollo 17 extravehicular activity one of the rover's fenders broke resulting in the astronauts getting covered in moon dust as they drove around. A makeshift replacement was made with maps and "duct tape"!
Watch them make the repair
Dec 11, 2017: Donald Trump signed Space Policy Directive 1 (SPD-1), launching the NASA Artemis program. He later signed the Artemis II hatch, which is tentatively scheduled to fly to the Moon and back in April 2026.
TIME's person of the year December 2016 / 2024...
One of the first official acts of Trump's presidency will be to pardon most of the rioters accused or convicted of storming the Capitol to block the certification of Biden’s victory.
Trump: “It’s going to start in the first hour. Maybe the first nine minutes.”
Iran recently plotted to have you assassinated. What are the chances of going to war with Iran during your next term?
Trump: "Anything can happen. Anything can happen. It's a very volatile situation. I think the most dangerous thing right now is what's happening, where Zelensky has decided, with the approval of, I assume, the President, to start shooting missiles into Russia. I think that’s a major escalation. I think it's a foolish decision. But I would imagine people are waiting until I get in before anything happens. I would imagine. I think that would be very smart to do that."
Do you trust Netanyahu?
Trump: "I don’t trust anybody."
What are your first priorities in Congress?
Trump: "Well, my first priorities are, I don't really need Congress for it, frankly, securing the border and drilling for oil."
You get some things from your father. What do you get from your mother?
Trump: "So my mother was a woman. She was born in Scotland. She had great respect for the queen, Queen Elizabeth. It was a long time. She was there for 75 years. And she liked the pomp and ceremony. She thought it was a good thing, not a bad thing. But she was glamorous and my father was hard nosed. It’s sort of an interesting combination. Maybe there's a combination. Here we sit in Mar a Lago. Maybe there's a combination of that."
Donald Trump 2024 TIME Person of the Year
Donald Trump Rings Opening Bell at New York Stock Exchange
LOL, TIME trying to have it both ways...which they link Fact-Checking What Donald Trump Said within the transcript. LOL, pathetic idiots.
Howard Lutnick is the chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald and BGC Group (financial firms). After losing 658 employees, including his brother, in the 9/11 attacks, Lutnick also survived the subsequent collapse of the towers on the ground.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
By Robert Frost (1922)
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
December 12, 1955: British engineer Christopher Cockerell patented the 1st hovercraft. The first known design for a hovercraft was made by Emmanuel Swedenborg as far back as 1716, but dismissed as impractical. Sir John Thornycroft produced models in the 1870s, but as the internal combustion engine had not yet been invented, he lacked a suitable power source. In 1955 Sir Christopher Cockerell (1910-1999) filed his first patent for a vehicle carried on an air-filled cushion, and in 1959 the SR-N1 became the first practical hovercraft. It used a gas turbine engine to power a large aircraft propeller, which drew air into a space beneath the craft. The air cushion was contained by a rubber skirt, and a second propeller moved the vehicle forward. Hovercraft have been successfully utilized as ferries, assault craft, and survey vessels.
The 1st commercial hovercraft, SR:N1 (Saunders-Roe Nautical 1), was built by Saunders Roe and successfully crossed the English Channel from Calais to Dover in just over two hours on 25 July 1959 with Cockerell on board.
NRDC Saunders Roe Nautical 1 - SRN1 (James' Hovercraft Site)
SR.N1 | The Hovercraft Museum
The 1962 Christmas classic "Do You Hear What I Hear?" was inspired by the Cuban Missile Crisis. But did you know Robert Goulet's version was co-songwriter Noël Regney's favorite interpretation.
NY Times (archived)
Noël Regney (born Léon Schlienger; 19 August 1922 – 22 November 2002), was a French World War II veteran and songwriter, best known for...
Do You Hear What I Hear? (1968)
Léon Schlienger, written backwards, is Noël Regnei (-lhcS). He grew up Catholic, but later became a Unitarian Universalist. He was drafted into the Nazi army despite being a Frenchman like many other "Malgré-nous". As an Alsatian, he spoke the German dialect Alsatian as fluently as French. It is said that he soon deserted, joined a group of French Resistance fighters, and became a double agent working for the French. He led a party of Nazis into an ambush, was shot in the arm, but survived. Eventually, while touring the United States, accompanying Lucienne Boyer, contemporary of Édith Piaf, he met his first wife pianist/composer Gloria Shayne with whom in 1962, he composed the Christmas song "Do You Hear What I Hear?" He had Pick's disease, a degenerative brain illness that causes dementia.
Wiki | Noel Regney, songwriter, 80
Dec 12, 1961: a Thor-Agena-B rocket with a special payload lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The launch of the reconnaissance satellite Discoverer 36 was considered routine, except that a piggyback passenger was aboard — Amateur Radio’s first satellite, OSCAR-1. (Orbiting Satellites Carrying Amateur Radio)
The uniqueness of the OSCAR-1 spacecraft was not only that itwas built by amateurs, for only $68 dollars and only about four years after the launch of Sputnik-1, but that it was the world’s first piggyback satellite and the world’s first private non-government spacecraft.
Immediately following the launch of OSCAR-1, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson honored it with a congratulatory telegram to the group sponsoring this momentous event in the history of Amateur Radio. It read:
“For me this project is symbolic of the type of freedom for which this country stands — freedom of enterprise and freedom of participation on the part of individuals throughout the world.”
OSCAR I operated for nearly 20 days, testing radio reception from space. During that time, thousands of radio operators in 28 different countries detected the satellite's simple "Hi" morse code message. To this day, many organizations identify their Morse-transmitting satellites with "HI", which also indicates laughter in amateur telegraphy like LOL.
Launch mass: 10.0 kilograms (22.0 lb)
Dimensions: 15.2 by 25.4 by 33 centimeters (6.0 in × 10.0 in × 13.0 in)
To get the project started, they called a series of high-level meetings of the members of the Project OSCAR group, the ARRL, representatives of the U.S. Air Force and the Lockheed Missiles and Space Company in Sunnyvale, California. At the time, Lance Ginner worked for Lockheed, having begun in January 1960 as an “A” Technician working in the Agena A and B space vehicle checkout complex. He was responsible for designing and building test aids to facilitate final systems checkout prior to shipment to Vandenberg Air Force Base for launch. The following year he advanced to a salaried position as a test conductor in satellite subsystems and systems level checkout. It was then that he became aware of Project OSCAR through meeting Chuck Townes and Nick Marshall, both of whom were also employed by Lockheed.
In an interview, Ginner answered a question about the most challenging aspects in the first OSCARs:
‘Getting the early OSCAR satellites approved for launch was a highly political process. I was a 21 year old just starting out in the field and was tremendously impressed by the talents of the OSCAR Board of Directors. The challenges the board faced in obtaining the permissions from the various government agencies and Lockheed were enormous. We had to keep in mind that ejectable sub-satellites were unknown at the time. And, convincing the various agencies that this ‘honor’ should go to a home built satellite with no official credentials was seen as a big risk. A premature release of the OSCAR satellite would keep the Agena satellite from deploying its booster adapter and would be a catastrophic end to the main mission. There were numerous meetings with government and military representatives, including many well-connected hams.
These discussions and the creation of the OSCAR ‘White Paper,’ helped establish the political and technical credibility we needed to obtain launch permission. The bureaucratic efforts probably exceeded those required to build the satellite.
“There were certainly technical risks in space hardware. In 1961, there were no transistors that would put out any real power at 144 MHz. We ended up using a prototype Fairchild part that was not even on the market. In those days, you did not have someone saying, ‘you can’t do it that way,’ because no one had ever done it before!"
OSCAR-1 Launched (PDF) | Project Oscar
December 12, 1966: Barney Hill was on an episode of To Tell the Truth. Will the Real Barney Hill Please Stand Up?
Dec 12, 1972: During the first Apollo 17 extravehicular activity one of the rover's fenders broke resulting in the astronauts getting covered in moon dust as they drove around. A makeshift replacement was made with maps and "duct tape"!
Watch them make the repair
Dec 11, 2017: Donald Trump signed Space Policy Directive 1 (SPD-1), launching the NASA Artemis program. He later signed the Artemis II hatch, which is tentatively scheduled to fly to the Moon and back in April 2026.
TIME's person of the year December 2016 / 2024...
One of the first official acts of Trump's presidency will be to pardon most of the rioters accused or convicted of storming the Capitol to block the certification of Biden’s victory.
Trump: “It’s going to start in the first hour. Maybe the first nine minutes.”
Iran recently plotted to have you assassinated. What are the chances of going to war with Iran during your next term?
Trump: "Anything can happen. Anything can happen. It's a very volatile situation. I think the most dangerous thing right now is what's happening, where Zelensky has decided, with the approval of, I assume, the President, to start shooting missiles into Russia. I think that’s a major escalation. I think it's a foolish decision. But I would imagine people are waiting until I get in before anything happens. I would imagine. I think that would be very smart to do that."
Do you trust Netanyahu?
Trump: "I don’t trust anybody."
What are your first priorities in Congress?
Trump: "Well, my first priorities are, I don't really need Congress for it, frankly, securing the border and drilling for oil."
You get some things from your father. What do you get from your mother?
Trump: "So my mother was a woman. She was born in Scotland. She had great respect for the queen, Queen Elizabeth. It was a long time. She was there for 75 years. And she liked the pomp and ceremony. She thought it was a good thing, not a bad thing. But she was glamorous and my father was hard nosed. It’s sort of an interesting combination. Maybe there's a combination. Here we sit in Mar a Lago. Maybe there's a combination of that."
Donald Trump 2024 TIME Person of the Year
Donald Trump Rings Opening Bell at New York Stock Exchange
LOL, TIME trying to have it both ways...which they link Fact-Checking What Donald Trump Said within the transcript. LOL, pathetic idiots.
Howard Lutnick is the chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald and BGC Group (financial firms). After losing 658 employees, including his brother, in the 9/11 attacks, Lutnick also survived the subsequent collapse of the towers on the ground.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
By Robert Frost (1922)
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
"It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong." – Thomas Sowell