The Eagle prepares to land: Photo shows Lunar Module ‘Eagle’ photographed from Command Module ‘Columbia’.
The Command Service Module Columbia.
On this day in 1969, Apollo 11 made thirty orbits of the moon which allowed them to view the landing site: the southern Sea of Tranquility, one of the most suitably flat areas. This area had confirmed by the Apollo 10 ‘dress rehearsal’ mission in which the crew captured vital film footage and photos while orbiting the moon.
The front-page headline of the Liverpool Evening Express on July 6, 1957, read “MERSEYSIDE SIZZLES,” in reference to the heat wave then gripping not just northern England, but all of Europe. The same headline could well have been used over a story that received no coverage at all that day: The story of the first encounter between two Liverpool teenagers named John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Like the personal and professional relationship it would lead to, their historic first meeting was a highly charged combination of excitement, rivalry and mutual respect.
It’s easy to assume that John and Paul would eventually have met on some other day had a mutual friend not chosen that hot and humid Saturday to make the introduction. But as much as they had in common, the two boys lived in different neighborhoods, went to different schools and were nearly two years apart in age.
Only John was scheduled to perform publicly on July 6, 1957. The occasion was the annual Woolton Parish Church Garden Fete, a parade and outdoor fair at which John and his Quarrymen Skiffle Group had been invited to play.
