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.

Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891)

On November 14, 1851, Moby-Dick was published. Now
considered a great classic of American literature—with
one of the most famous opening lines in fiction: “Call
me Ishmael”—the book about Captain Ahab and his
quest to catch a giant white whale was originally a big
flop.

Its author, Herman Melville was born in New York City
in 1819. As a young man, he spent time in the merchant
marines, the U.S. Navy and on a whaling ship in the South
Seas.

First U.S. edition.

Near the end of a weeklong national salute to Americans who
served in the Vietnam War, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
was dedicated in Washington, D.C. after a march to its site
by thousands of veterans of the conflict

.

       
The long-awaited memorial was a simple V-shaped black-
granite wall inscribed with the names of the 57,939
Americans who died in the conflict, arranged in order
of death, not rank, as was common in other memorials.

The designer of the memorial was Maya Lin, a Yale
University architecture student who entered a
nationwide competition to  create a design for
the monument. Lin, born in Ohio in 1959, the
daughter of Chinese immigrants.        


        
        
        
       
       

Bob Doubek, project director, and Maya Lin, designer of the 
Memorial.

WASHINGTON (TNND) — The United States Treasury minted
its final production of pennies on Wednesday at the U.S. Mint
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (above).

"The penny was first authorized by the Coinage Act of 1792;
however, ongoing increases in production costs and the
evolution in consumer habits and technology have made its
production financially untenable," according to a statement
from the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

The last two pennies minted were stamped with a special
omega and will not be circulated. Instead, the government
intends to auction the pennies off.

In February, President Donald Trump publicly called to halt
penny production, citing the fact that pennies cost more
money than they are worth.

The half-cent coin was the last coin to be discontinued in
1857. 

                
CAMILE BOHANNON