Today in History: December 7

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Photo number AS17-148-22727 (above) was taken by the crew of Apollo 17—Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans and Harrison Schmitt—at 5:39 a.m. EST on this date in 1972. Soon after NASA released it for publication, it acquired a nickname: “The Blue Marble,” and it is one of the most frequently reproduced photos in history.

Apollo 17 had been launched about five hours earlier from the Kennedy Space Center and was in a parking orbit about 28,000 miles from Earth. About an hour later, the craft left that orbit and continued to the Moon. Apollo 17 remains the last manned mission to the Moon, the last manned mission to travel beyond a low Earth orbit.
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Today in History: Dec. 6

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

On the morning of December 6, 1917, the world’s fourth-largest man-made non-nuclear explosion obliterated the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, in Canada. It is estimated that the blast, the result of an accident, released energy the equivalent of 2.9 kilotons of TNT. (“Little Boy,” the bomb dropped over Hiroshima, released about 19 kilotons.) In the photo above, the explosion reaches more than two miles up. It is the photo taken closest to the moment after the explosion.

The explosion, combined with a tsunami it created in Halifax Harbor, was the most devastating man-made blast until the nuclear age. Almost 2000 people were killed and many thousands more were injured.
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‘I Want to Vanish’

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The original concept for All This Useless Beauty, the 1996 album from Elvis Costello & The Attractions, was to have that band record songs that Costello sold to other performers: to have Elvis Costello “cover” Elvis Costello songs that audiences first heard performed by other artists.

Because Paul McCartney never recorded “Shallow Grave,” and Johnny Cash never recorded “Complicated Shadows,” and Sam Moore had not recorded “Why Can’t a Man Stand Alone,” the concept never left its life as an idea and Costello became the first to record and release several of his songs. He “covers” his own songs.
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