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.
On June 24, 1997, U.S. Air Force officials released a 231-page
report dismissing long-standing claims of an alien spacecraft
crash in Roswell, New Mexico, almost exactly 50 years earlier.
Public interest in Unidentified Flying Objects, or UFOs, began
to flourish in the 1940s, when developments in space travel
and the dawn of the atomic age caused many Americans to
turn their attention to the skies.
The town of Roswell, located in southeastern New Mexico,
became a magnet for UFO believers due to the strange events
of early July 1947, when ranch foreman W.W. Brazel found a
strange, shiny material scattered over some of his land.
He turned the material over to the sheriff, who passed it on to
authorities at the nearby Air Force base.
On July 8, Air Force officials announced they had recovered
the wreckage of a “flying disk’’ (below).
A local newspaper put the story on its front page, launching
Roswell into the spotlight of the public’s UFO fascination.
With conspiracy theories still alive and well on the Internet,
Roswell continues to thrive as a tourist destination for UFO
enthusiasts far and wide, hosting the annual UFO Encounter
Festival each July and welcoming visitors year-round to its
International UFO Museum and Research Center.
Singer, songwriter and activist Willie Nelson led the "outlaw
country" movement in the late 1960s. Hits include "On the
Road Again."
U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Guion S. Bluford became
the first African American to travel into space when the space
shuttle Challenger lifted off on its third mission.
It was the first night launch of a space shuttle, and many people
stayed up late to watch the spacecraft roar up from Cape
Canaveral, Florida, at 2:32 a.m.
The Challenger spent six days in space, during which time
Bluford and his crew members launched a communications
satellite for the government of India, made contact with an
errant communications satellite, conducted various scientific experiments, and tested the shuttle’s robotic arm.
Just before dawn on September 5, the shuttle landed at Edwards
Air Force Base in California, bringing an end to the most flawless
shuttle mission to that date.
Guion Stewart Bluford Jr. (82)
On March 17, 1973, Associated Press photographer Slava
“Sal” Veder captured a heartwarming scene on the tarmac
of California’sTravis Air Force Base as a recently freed
American prisoner of war runs toward his family.
The jubilation of the moment is encapsulated in the central
image of his teenaged daughter, whose wide smile and
outstretched arms express her unbridled exuberance over
her father’s return from Vietnam.
The photo depicting Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm and his family,
called “Burst of Joy,” goes on to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1974.
Stirm was among 20 POWs from prison camps in North
Vietnam aboard the plane that landed at Travis AFB,
where a large crowd of family members turned up to
welcome their loved ones home.
Stirm, an Air Force fighter pilot shot down over Hanoi in
1967, had spent more than five years as a prisoner of the
Vietnam War.
“Burst of Joy” has appeared in numerous books and
exhibits and symbolizes for many the end of the divisive
Vietnam War—which claimed some 58,000 American lives
and the dawn of new life after a dark period.
Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm
Stirm retired from the United States Air
Force as a Colonel and lives in California.
Slava "Sal" Veder
