TIM MAGUIRE

Left: The crew of Apollo 12 – Charles “Pete” Conrad,
left, Richard F. Gordon, and Alan L. Bean. Right:

Apollo 12, the second manned mission to the surface of
the moon,was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida,
with astronauts Charles Conrad, Jr.; Richard F. Gordon,
Jr.; and Alan L. Bean aboard.

President Richard Nixon viewed the liftoff from Pad A at
Cape Canaveral. He was the first president to attend the
liftoff of a manned space flight.

Thirty-six seconds after takeoff, lightning struck the
ascending Saturn 5 launch rocket (below )which tripped
the circuit breakers in the command module and caused
a power failure.

Fortunately, the launching rocket continued up normally,
and within a few minutes power was restored in the
spacecraft.

President Richard Nixon (white coat) viewing the liftoff of
Apollo 12.

Exactly three years after the end of World War I, the Tomb
of the Unknown Soldier is dedicated at Arlington Cemetery
in Virginia during an Armistice Day ceremony presided over
by President Warren G. Harding.

Two days before, an unknown American soldier, who had
fallen somewhere on a World War I battlefield, arrived at
the nation’s capital from a military cemetery in France.

As the soldier was lowered to his final resting place, a two-
inch layer of soil brought from France was placed below his
coffin so that he might rest forever atop the earth on which
he died.

John F. Kennedy, 43, becomes the youngest man ever to
be elected president of the United States, narrowly beating
Republican Vice President Richard Nixon. He was also the
first Catholic to become president.

On November 7, 1944, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was
elected to an unprecedented fourth term in office. FDR remains
the only president to have served more than two terms.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945)