1776 – Marines participated in the USS Wasp’s capture of a British ship off the coast of New England. 1906 – Marines protected Americans during revolution in Cuba. Revolution broke out in Cuba in 1906, and a Marine expeditionary force was sent to the island to establish and maintain law and order. In mid-1906 Cuban internal strife caused the United States to invoke the Platt Amendment and send troops to the island nation in an attempt to restore order. William Howard Taft, now Secretary-of-War, sent his Philippine Insurrection veterans. 2004 – Gordon “Gordo” Cooper, one of the original Mercury astronauts who pioneered human space exploration, died. He was 77. One of the original seven Mercury astronauts, Cooper piloted the final flight of the Mercury program, the United States’ first manned spaceflight program. An Oklahoman, Cooper was born March 6, 1927, in Shawnee. Cooper was a World War II veteran. He joined the Marines and transferred to the Air Force in 1949. He earned a bachelor of science degree in aeronautical engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology in 1956 and served as a test pilot in the Flight Test Division at Edwards Air Force Base. Cooper was selected as a Mercury astronaut in April 1959. On May 15, 1963, Cooper piloted the “Faith 7″ spacecraft on a 22-orbit mission that lasted 34 hours and 20 minutes. In 1965 he served as command pilot of the Gemini 5 mission. He and Charles Conrad established a new space endurance record by traveling more than 3.3 million miles in an elapsed time of 190 hours, 56 minutes, and proved that humans could survive in a weightless state for the length of a trip to the moon. It also tested a new power source for future flights – fuel cells. During a 1995 reunion of surviving Mercury astronauts, Cooper was asked who was the greatest fighter pilot he ever saw, Cooper answered, “You’re looking at him!”
Posted on: Fri, 04 Oct 2013 11:43:15 +0000
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