“Pages of history” features excerpts from The News Journal archives including The Morning News and The Evening Journal.
Man steps onto moon; Armstrong, Aldrin take walk early
Man has stepped onto the moon.
Astronaut Neil A. Armstrong took the first moonstep last night at 10:56 p.m., Delaware time, just six hours and 39 minutes after he and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. fulfilled the age-old dream of landing on the moon.
The moon landing was at 4:17 p.m., Delaware time. The date, July 20, 1969….
The successful moon landing brought almost to an end the eight-year national effort stimulated by the words of a president, now deceased.
“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth,” John F. Kennedy told Congress on May 5, 1961.
The first half of the goal has been achieved.
Ahead lies the task of returning Armstrong, Aldrin and Michael Collins safely back to Earth.
The landing went perfectly. Amstrong and Aldrin guided their spacecraft to a landing only three or four miles beyond the planned site. But the overshoot was deliberate.
Shortly after the landing was completed, Armstrong told the ground the “auto targeting was taking us right into a football field-size crater with a large number of big boulders and rocks for about one or two crater diameters around it. “And, it required that we fly manually over the rock field to find a reasonably good area.”
…Aldrin followed Armstrong out onto the surface at 11:15 p.m.
Ten minutes later, the two moonwalkers unveiled a plaque mounted on one of the Eagle’s legs. “Here men from the Planet Earth first set food upon the moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind,” Armstrong read….
Delaware's NASA connection:ILC Dover moves headquarters to University of Delaware STAR Campus
July 23, 1934, Evening Journal
Dillinger slain by federal guns
CHICAGO – John Dillinger lay on a cold slab in the Cook County morgue today. He was slain by three bullets fired by unnamed federal operatives last night after they had been tipped off by a woman.
Crowds of the curious milled through the gloomy building, seeking to view the corpse of the most notorious desperado of the year and to verify to their own satisfaction that federal crack shots had finally terminated the incredible crime career of the internationally known hoodlum….
Melvin H. Purvis, chief of the Chicago staff of the Federal Department of Investigation, who arranged the ambush that resulted in the fugitive’s death as he left a motion picture house, announced that a wide search for Homer Van Meter, gunner-in-chief for the Dillinger mob; George “Baby Face” Nelson, John Hamilton, Alvin Karpts, Fred Barker and the other raiders was only intensified by the assassination of the Mooresville, Indiana Mohawk….
July 24, 1922, Wilmington Morning News
Tribunal urged President to end coal strike
President Harding was urged to appoint immediately a non-partisan fact-finding tribunal to inquire into the coal situation in a telegram sent tonight by A.M. Ogle, president of the National Coal Association. The President announced the consideration of such a commission last week….
Operators from the coal-producing districts of six states will be asked tomorrow by Secretary Hoover to cooperate with the government and the railroads in a plan to insure the distribution of fuel to the carriers and public utilities and to prevent profiteering during the strike emergency….
A striking miner and his wife were wounded in a shooting at a tent colony near the Footedale mine of the H.C. Frick Coke Company yesterday near Uniontown, Pa. Four deputy sheriffs were arrested.
The deputies, according to reports to Sheriff I.I. Shaw, were en route to a mine at Collier, where they were on duty as guards. Their automobile stopped at the tent colony when the gasoline supply was exhausted.
The deputies got into an argument with a striker, and four shots were fired. One bullet went into a tent occupied by William Collins. It struck Collins in the wrist, was deflected by a bone, and then went through Mrs. Collins’ right arm. State troopers were called from Newsalem and they arrested three of the deputies at Footedale. The fourth was arrested at Collier.
Catch up on history:Johnstown flood, nine years without NCCo tax hike: News Journal archives, May 26-June 1
July 25, 1969, The Morning News
Astronauts sail on waves of acclaim; Landing caps moon mission
The Apollo 11 astronauts, back on Earth yesterday after completing their moon-landing mission, were cruising toward Pearl Harbor about the U.S. Hornet last night.
They went aboard the Hornet about an hour after splashing upside down into the Pacific Ocean right on time at 12:49 p.m. about a mile and a half from their target point.
The so-called “stable two” landing, in which the spacecraft was tipped by a wave catching its edge as it dropped into the water and turned top down, added an unexpectedly dramatic finish to their epic flight – a flight in which man took a step away from his home planet….
Reported in “excellent condition” was not only Michael Collins, who took care of the command module while his compatriots were walking on the moon, but also the first men to tread upon another celestial body, Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin Jr.
Reach reporter Ben Mace at rmace@gannett.com.
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