October 11 · This Day in America
Twenty-one months ago, three astronauts died in seconds inside a sealed capsule on the pad — Apollo 1, a fire in a test that never left the ground. The program nearly ended there. This morning at Cape Kennedy, Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele, and Walter Cunningham ride a Saturn IB off Launch Complex 34 and into orbit, the first Americans to fly an Apollo spacecraft. For nearly eleven days they wring out the redesigned command module — the ship's engine, its guidance, its life support — the machine that has to be perfect before anyone aims it at the Moon. They also point a camera at themselves and beam down the first live television from an American spacecraft, grinning, weightless, alive. It works. Everything works. Eight weeks later, Apollo 8 leaves for the Moon. The road to the lunar surface runs straight through this flight.
Source: www.nasa.gov
Also on this day · 1975
At 11:30 p.m. on NBC, a strange new show begins with a sketch that ends in a man dropping dead and a voice shouting "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!" George Carlin hosts; the cast is seven unknowns billed as the Not Ready for Prime Time Players. Belushi, Radner, Aykroyd, Chase. Comedy television would not look the same again, and fifty years later it is still live, still Saturday.
Source: www.history.com