Adrian Joseph Cronauer was a radio personality and U.S. Air
Force Sergeant, whose experiences as an innovative disc
jockey on American Forces Network during the Vietnam War
inspired the 1987 film Good Morning, Vietnam starring Robin
Williams (below) as Cronauer.

In a ceremony held at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, General
Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Florence Blanchfield (above) to
be a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, making her the first
woman in U.S. history to hold permanent military rank.

A member of the Army Nurse Corps since 1917, Blanchfield
secured her commission following the passage of the Army-
Navy Nurse Act of 1947 by Congress.

Blanchfield had served as superintendent of the Army Nurse
Corps during World War II and was instrumental in securing
passage of the Army-Navy Nurse Act, which was advocated by Representative Frances Payne Bolton.

In 1951, Blanchfield received the Florence Nightingale Award
from the International Red Cross.

In 1978, a U.S. Army hospital in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, was
named in her honor.

Shortly after leaving a party on Chappaquiddick Island, Senator
Edward “Ted” Kennedy of Massachusetts drove a vehicle off a
wooden bridge into a tide-swept pond.

Kennedy escaped the submerged car, but his passenger, 28-year-
old Mary Jo Kopechne, did not.

The senator did not report the fatal car accident for 10 hours.

There is speculation that he used his considerable influence to
avoid more serious charges that could have resulted from the
episode.

Although the incident on Chappaquiddick Island helped to derail 
his presidential hopes, Kennedy continued to serve as a U.S.
senator of Massachusetts into the 21st century. He died in 2009.

Edward “Ted” Kennedy (born February 22, 1932,
Boston, Massachusetts; died August 25, 2009).