CAMILLE
BOHANNON

Retired actor Charles Robert Redford Jr. is 83 today.

1976

1969

 
    
    
   
On this day in 1971, St. Louis Cardinals ace Bob Gibson threw the first no-
hitter of his storied career. Gibson’s heroics helped his team sail to an 11-
0 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Gibson overcame numerous childhood ailments, including rickets, asthma
and a heart murmur, to earn a basketball scholarship to Creighton University
after high school. His basketball skills were so impressive that in 1957 he
spent a year playing for the Harlem Globetrotters.

Robert Gibson will be 84 in November.

CARLATA BRADLEY

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.

ROSS SIMPSON

From left: John  Lennon and Paul McCartney.

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.

SANDY KOZEL

Elvis Presley’s first commercial recording session took place in Memphis, TN. on this day in 1954.  He recorded "That’s All Right
(Mama)" and "Blue Moon of Kentucky."

   
    
 
Elvis, Bill Black, Scotty Moore; Sam Phillips in foreground; Sun
Records, Memphis, TN, 1954.