Month: April 2024

NASA Announces the "Mercury Seven" (1959)

Project Mercury was the first successful manned spaceflight program of the US. It ran from 1959 through 1963 with the goal of putting a man in orbit around the Earth. The first Americans to venture into space were drawn from a group of 110 military pilots chosen for their flight test experience and their satisfaction of certain physical requirements; seven were selected to be astronauts in April 1959 and were quickly dubbed the “Mercury Seven.” How many of them went on to fly Mercury missions? Discuss

Jørn Utzon (1918)

Utzon was a Danish architect who, in 1957, won a competition to design Australia’s Sydney Opera House, which was completed in 1973 and was declared a World Heritage Site in 2007. Utzon is only the second architect in history to see his work assigned this status during his lifetime. In 1966, after designing the opera house’s distinctive roof—a series of glittering white shell-shaped vaults—and spending nearly a decade on the project, Utzon was forced to resign mid-project. Why? Discuss

The May 1968 Protests

May 1968 is the name given to a series of protests and a general strike that nearly led to the collapse of the de Gaulle government in France. It began as a series of student strikes at a number of universities and lycées in Paris and quickly spread throughout the country. Within a matter of weeks, roughly two-thirds of France’s workforce, or 10 million people, were on strike. The vast majority of the protesters espoused left-wing causes and pushed for change in what areas of French society? Discuss

Entente Cordiale Signed by France and UK (1904)

The Entente Cordiale was an agreement that settled numerous colonial disputes and ended antagonisms between Britain and France. It granted freedom of action to Britain in Egypt and to France in Morocco and resolved several other imperial disputes. The agreement was consequently upsetting to Germany, which had benefited from their antagonism. The Entente paved the way for Anglo-French diplomatic cooperation against Germany before World War I and for what later military alliance? Discuss

Edmund Husserl (1859)

Husserl was a German philosopher and the founder of the phenomenological movement. His philosophy is a descriptive study of consciousness for the purpose of discovering the structure of experience—the laws by which experiences are had. Husserl concluded that consciousness has no life apart from the objects it considers and, in his later work, moved toward idealism and denied that objects exist outside consciousness. Husserl had a major influence on what German philosopher? Discuss

Project MOOSE

MOOSE, originally an acronym for Man Out Of Space Easiest and later changed to the more professional-sounding Manned Orbital Operations Safety Equipment, was a proposed emergency bail-out system capable of bringing a single astronaut safely back to Earth from orbit. The system required the astronaut to exit his spacecraft in a specially-designed suit, climb into a plastic bag filled with insulating foam, and reenter the atmosphere protected by a thin heat shield. Has anyone ever used the system? Discuss