Day: May 7, 2021

Mercury Redstone 3 Launch

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Sixty years ago, near the dawn of the space age, NASA controllers “lit the candle” and sent Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard arcing into space atop a Redstone rocket. His cramped space capsule was dubbed Freedom 7. Broadcast live to a global television audience, the historic Mercury-Redstone 3 (MR-3) spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral Florida at 9:34 a.m. Eastern Time on May 5, 1961. The flight of Freedom 7, the first space flight by an American, followed less than a month after the first human venture into space by Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. The 15 minute sub-orbital flight achieved an altitude of 116 miles and a maximum speed of 5,134 miles per hour. As Shepard looked back near the peak of Freedom 7’s trajectory, he could see the outlines of the west coast of Florida, Lake Okeechobe in central Florida, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Bahamas. Shepard would later view planet Earth from a more distant perspective and walk on the Moon as commander of the Apollo 14 mission. via NASA https://ift.tt/2RsHkgO

Wikipedia article of the day for May 7, 2021

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Wikipedia article of the day is Frances Gertrude McGill. Check it out: Article-Link Summary: Frances Gertrude McGill (1882–1959) was a Canadian scientist who was a forensic pathologist, nicknamed the “Sherlock Holmes of Saskatchewan” for her deductive skills and public fame. McGill influenced the development of forensic pathology in Canadian police work. After receiving her medical degree in 1915, McGill moved to Saskatchewan, where she was hired first as the provincial bacteriologist and then as the provincial pathologist. She worked extensively with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and local police forces for more than thirty years, and was instrumental in establishing the first RCMP forensic laboratory. She directed the RCMP laboratory for three years, and trained new RCMP recruits in forensic detection methods. After retiring in 1946, McGill was appointed Honorary Surgeon for the RCMP by the Canadian minister of justice, becoming one of its first official female members. McGill Lake in northern Saskatchewan was named in her honour.