Today in History, December 21st
On December 21, 1968, Apollo 8 launched the first crewed voyage to the moon. Plus the first basketball game and the first crossword puzzle.
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December 21 is best known as the day in 1968 when Apollo 8 launched, sending the first humans toward the moon. The date also gave the world the first basketball game in 1891 and the first modern crossword puzzle in 1913.
The big story: Apollo 8 Heads for the Moon (1968)
On the morning of December 21, 1968, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders rode a Saturn V off the pad in Florida. It was the first time that giant rocket had carried a crew, and the first time anyone had aimed for somewhere beyond low Earth orbit. The flight was a bold reshuffle. The lunar module was running behind schedule, so NASA sent this crew to the moon without one rather than let the whole program stall. On Christmas Eve the spacecraft slipped into lunar orbit and circled the moon 10 times. During a live broadcast, the astronauts showed pictures of Earth and the moon and took turns reading from the Book of Genesis. Anders also snapped the photo now known as “Earthrise,” a small blue planet hanging over a gray lunar horizon. It gave millions of people a new way to see their home. The capsule splashed down safely on December 27, and the path to a landing the next summer was open.
More events on December 21
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1864 | Union General William Tecumseh Sherman captured Savannah, Georgia, ending his March to the Sea. |
| 1866 | Native warriors ambushed and killed 81 U.S. soldiers led by William Fetterman in present-day Wyoming. |
| 1891 | James Naismith tried out his new game of basketball with 18 students in Springfield, Massachusetts. |
| 1913 | The New York World printed the first modern crossword puzzle. |
| 1937 | Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered. |
| 1945 | General George S. Patton died in Germany from injuries suffered in a car accident, not in battle. |
| 1958 | Charles de Gaulle was elected the first president of France’s Fifth Republic. |
| 1970 | President Richard Nixon met Elvis Presley at the White House. |
| 1988 | A bomb destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. |
| 1991 | The Commonwealth of Independent States formally came into being as the Soviet Union broke apart. |
| 2012 | “Gangnam Style” became the first YouTube video to pass one billion views. |
| 2020 | Jupiter and Saturn appeared just a tenth of a degree apart, their closest pairing in the sky in nearly 400 years. |
Born on December 21
- 1804: Benjamin Disraeli, British prime minister and novelist.
- 1911: Josh Gibson, Negro leagues catcher and one of baseball’s greatest home run hitters.
- 1940: Frank Zappa, composer, guitarist and leader of the Mothers of Invention.
- 1959: Florence Griffith Joyner, sprinter who won three Olympic golds in 1988.
Keep reading
Sources
- Apollo 8, NASA
- Apollo 8: Christmas at the Moon, NASA
- What Happened on December 21, Britannica
- December 21: This Day in History, History.com
- Commonwealth of Independent States, Britannica
- The Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, NASA
- Benjamin Disraeli, Britannica
- Josh Gibson, Britannica
- Frank Zappa, Britannica
- Florence Griffith Joyner, Britannica
