July 21 · This Day in America
On a hot Sunday near Manassas, Virginia, two armies of green volunteers collide in the war's first major battle. Washington is so sure of quick victory that congressmen and ladies ride out with picnic baskets to watch. For a while the Union pushes the Confederates back. Then a Virginia brigade holds a hill "like a stone wall," the rebel line steadies, and the federal retreat curdles into a panicked rout that sweeps the spectators up with it, all the way back to the capital. Nearly five thousand are killed, wounded, or missing in a single afternoon. The North learns, in one terrible day, that the rebellion will not be put down in ninety days, and the South learns that winning a battle is not winning a war. Both sides go home and start preparing for years of it.
Source: www.battlefields.org
Also on this day · 1969
After a night on the lunar surface, Armstrong and Aldrin fire the ascent engine of the lunar module Eagle. There is no backup. If it fails to light, they stay forever. It lights. They rise off the Moon, rendezvous with Collins in orbit, and begin the long fall home. The hardest, least-remembered miracle of Apollo 11 was not landing on the Moon. It was leaving it.
Source: www.nasa.gov