The Wizard of Oz, starring Judy Garland and featuring words
and music by E.Y. “Yip” Harburg and Harold Arlen, received
its world premiere in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, on August
12, 1939.

The beloved characters and familiar plot points were mostly
all there in the original children’s book, from the Kansas farm
girl in shiny slippers transported to Munchkin land by a terrible
tornado, to the wicked witch, the brainless scarecrow, the
heartless tin woodsman and the cowardly lion she encounters
once she gets there.

On August 10, 1984, the action thriller Red Dawn, starring
Patrick Swayze, opened in theaters as the first movie to be
released with a PG-13 rating. The Motion Picture Association
of America (MPAA), which oversees the movie rating system,
had announced the new PG-13 category in July of that same
year.

From the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida,
the U.S. unmanned spacecraft Explorer 6 was launched into
an orbit around the earth. The spacecraft, commonly known
as the “Paddlewheel” satellite, featured a photocell scanner
that transmitted a crude picture of the earth’s surface and
cloud cover from a distance of 17,000 miles. The photo,
received in Hawaii, took nearly 40 minutes to transmit.

Released by NASA in September, the first photograph ever
taken of the earth by a U.S. satellite (below) depicted a
crescent shape of part of the planet in sunlight. It was
Mexico, captured by Explorer 6 as it raced westward over
the earth at speeds in excess of 20,000 miles an hour. 

First satellite image of the Earth from space, taken by
Explorer 6 in 1959.

Explorer 6 Satellite (Reconstructed Replica) at the National Space Museum.

MIKE GRACIA

President Lyndon Johnson signs Medicare Bill into law as former President Harry Truman watches.

On July 30, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Medicare,
a health insurance program for elderly Americans, into law. At the
bill-signing ceremony, which took place at the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, former President Harry Truman was
enrolled as Medicare’s first beneficiary and received the first
Medicare card.

Johnson wanted to recognize Truman, who, in 1945, had become
the first president to propose national health insurance, an initiative
that was opposed at the time by Congress.