I heard on the radio this morning that former astronaut Wally Shirra died yesterday. The fifth of the Original Seven to fly, Shirra was apparently quite a character. He also was the commander of Apollo 7, the first manned mission after the Apollo I disaster, which ended in Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chafee died in a tragic fire on the pad during a test.
Though he flew that mission with what became one of the most famous colds in history, Shirra had a sense of humor; he was known to young kids of the 1970s for an Actifed commercial in which he said "You ever sneeze in one of these?" while holding a space helmet.
Read more about Shirra and the early space program in Thomas Wolfe's The Right Stuff and A Man on the Moon by Andrew Chaiken, whose book is the basis for much of the 1998 HBO series From the Earth to the Moon, which I also highly recommend.
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