On May 8, 1963, with the release of Dr. No, North American
moviegoers get their first look–down the barrel of a gun–at
the super-spy James Bond (codename: 007), the immortal
character created by Ian Fleming in his now-famous series
of novels and portrayed onscreen by the relatively unknown
Scottish actor Sean Connery (1930 – 2020).
On May 5, 1961, Navy Commander Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr.
was launched into space aboard the Freedom 7 space
capsule, becoming the first American astronaut to travel
into space.
The suborbital flight, which lasted 15 minutes and reached
a height of 116 miles into the atmosphere, was a major triumph
for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
The view from Freedom 7.
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The Land Rover, a British-made all-terrain vehicle that will soon
earn a reputation for its use in exotic locales, debuted at an auto
show in Amsterdam on April 30, 1948.
The first Land Rover, known as the Series 1, was the brainchild
of Maurice Wilks, the head designer for the British car company
Rover, of which his brother Spencer Wilks was the managing
director.
Maurice Fernand Cary Wilks
(19 August 1904 – 8 September 1963)
On April 29, 2004, the World War II Memorial opened in
Washington, D.C. to thousands of visitors, providing
overdue recognition for the 16 million U.S. men and
women who served in the war. The memorial is located
on 7.4 acres on the former site of the Rainbow Pool at
the National Mall between the Washington Monument
and the Lincoln Memorial. The Capitol dome is seen to
the east, and Arlington Cemetery is just across the
Potomac River to the west.
On April 25, 1950, the Boston Celtics make Chuck Cooper, an
All-American forward from Duquesne University, the first
African American picked in NBA draft. With the selection,
the first pick in the second round, Cooper breaks the NBA’s
color barrier and changes the league for the better.
Cooper continued his pace-setting off the court upon his
retirement. He earned a Master’s Degree in Social Work
from the University of Minnesota in 1960. In 1970, he
became the City of Pittsburgh’s first Black department
head and later served as Pittsburgh National Bank’s first
Urban Affairs Officer.
The Boston Celtics posthumously awarded him with a
‘Heroes Among Us’ award in 2016.
Charles Henry Cooper (September 29, 1926 – February 5, 1984)
