August 25 · This Day in America
President Woodrow Wilson puts his signature to the Organic Act, and the United States becomes the first nation to gather its wild and storied places under a single promise. The new bureau inherits some thirty-five parks and monuments that had been left, until now, with no one truly minding them. The law's charge is almost a poem: to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein, and to leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations. Read that last phrase again. Not for us. For people not yet born, who will stand at the rim of the Grand Canyon or under a sequoia older than Rome and feel the same small awe we feel. A country that was barely a century old chose to hold something back, on purpose, forever. It is one of the most generous decisions Americans have ever made.
Source: www.nps.gov
Also on this day · 2012
The first human to set foot on another world dies at 82, following heart surgery. His family calls him a reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job, and they leave the rest of us a gentle instruction: the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink. Forty-three years after the footprint, the man who made it goes quietly home.
Source: www.nasa.gov