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5 July    Sir Thomas Sean Connery  "The Greatest Living Scot"  was knighted by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in Edinburgh 16 years ago

Wearing full Highland dress — the dark-green MacLeod tartan — “Sir Sean” emerged from the hourlong ceremony at Edinburgh’s Holyrood Palace to meet reporters and cheering crowds who had gathered to see him.

His wife Micheline and brother Neil were by his side.

“It’s one of the proudest days of my life,” said a beaming Connery, 69, showing off the gold medal on its bright red sash. “It means a great deal for it to happen in Scotland.”

Throughout his life, Sir Sean Connery has been an ardent supporter of Scotland. While it is generally accepted that his support of Scotland's independence and the Scottish National Party delayed his knighthood for many years, his commitment to Scotland has never wavered. Politics in the United Kingdom often has more intrigue than a James Bond plot. While Scotland is not yet independent, she does have a new parliament. Sir Sean campaigned hard for the yes vote during the Scottish Referendum that created the new Scottish Parliament. He believes firmly that the Scottish Parliament will grow in power and that Scotland will be independent within his lifetime.

  6 July  The Day John Lennon met Paul McCartney

It was back in 1957 when Paul had been invited to watch the Quarrymen by a mutual friend. John and his ragtag band were playing twice at the St. Peter’s Church fête in the Woolton Parish. After the band’s first concert, Paul was introduced to John, who, Paul recalled, had breath smelling of illegally-obtained beer.  The man who introduced the two budding musicians was Paul’s twin friend, Ivan Vaughn, who coincidentally enough was born on the exact same day as Paul.  After the brief introduction, Paul played John the song “Twenty Flight Rock” by Eddie Cochrane

The two were very impressed with one another.  As John recalled,  “I dug him.”  So much so that John asked Paul to join his fledgling band the next day. The stars were celebrating on the sky in a joyous celestial scenery, Sun-Mercury hand in hand  in a smooth triangle with Moon into the water while Venus, Mars and Uranus were all happy together on 7' of Leo  blessing with love and Joy  -  Day's treasure "A constant Bliss"   

7 July  The Famed  Ziegfeld Follies premier on the Roof of NYC's Jardin De Paris 

The Ziegfeld Follies were a series of elaborate theatrical productions on Broadway in New York City from 1907 through 1931, with renewals in 1934 and 1936.

 Inspired by the Folies Bergère of Paris, the Ziegfeld Follies were conceived and mounted by Florenz Ziegfeld called the "glorifier of the American girl", reportedly at the suggestion of his then-wife, the entertainer Anna Held. The shows' producers were turn-of-the-twentieth-century producing titans Klaw & Erlanger.

“The Follies of 1907,” as his show was first called, premiered on the roof of the city’s famed Jardin de Paris Theater. The Jardin de Paris was an enclosed roof garden atop New York Theater (previously Olympia Music Hall and later the Leow’s Theater). In this 1909 photograph of Times Square, you can see the glass enclosed Jardin de Paris on the top two floors of the New York Theater on the left. 

 We're seemingly in a golden age of the rooftop. Oscar Hammerstein I's roof gardens were the most opulent. At 44th and Broadway, his Olympia Theatre took up an entire city block and was covered with a 65-foot high frosted-glass roof lit with 3,000 electric lights. Water ran over it to keep it cool, pumped up from a refrigerated tank in the basement. It had a rustic alpine design, with rock crags and a stream that flowed into a 40-foot-long lake. There were live swans imported from Russia, South American monkeys, a duck pond, little cabins, gardens, and a wooden bridge. A promenade wound around the building, with views to New Jersey and beyond CentralPark.

8 July    Happy Roswell day! (69th anniversary of press announcement)

Back in 1947, the Roswell Army Air Field public information officer Walter Haut, issued a press release stating that personnel from the field's 509th Operations Group had recovered a "flying disk" which had crashed on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico.

  The Unidentified Flying Object was a spacecraft containing extraterrestrial life most probably from a binary star of Zeta Reticuli Constellation 39 light years away  

 its occupants were captured    

and the military engaged in a massive cover-up.

http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?3707-Possible-original-photo-of-the-Roswell-craft

The Roswell incident has turned into a widely known pop culture phenomenon, making the name "Roswell" synonymous with UFOs. Roswell has become the most publicized of all alleged UFO incidents.

9 July   Remember your humanity, and forget all the rest.

The Russell–Einstein Manifesto was issued in London on 9 July 1955 by Bertrand Russell in the midst of the Cold War. The manifesto was released during a press conference at Caxton Hall,Westminster, London.

Russell had begun the conference by stating:"I am bringing the warning pronounced by the signatories to the notice of all the powerful Governments of the world in the earnest hope that they may agree to allow their citizens to survive".

It highlighted the dangers posed by nuclear weapons and called for world leaders to seek peaceful resolutions to international conflict. The signatories included eleven pre-eminent intellectuals and scientists, including Albert Einstein, who signed it just days before his death on 18 April 1955.

 Background

On 18 August 1945, the Glasgow Forward published the first known recorded comment by Bertrand Russell on atomic weapons, which he began composing the day Nagasaki was bombed. It contained threads that would later appear in the manifesto:

The prospect for the human race is sombre beyond all precedent. Mankind are faced with a clear-cut alternative: either we shall all perish, or we shall have to acquire some slight degree of common sense. A great deal of new political thinking will be necessary if utter disaster is to be averted.

After learning of the bombing of Hiroshima and seeing an impending nuclear arms race, Joseph Rotblat, the only scientist to leave the Manhattan Project on moral grounds, remarked that he "became worried about the whole future of mankind".

Over the years that followed Russell and Rotblat worked on efforts to curb nuclear proliferation, collaborating with Albert Einstein and other scientists to compose what became known as the Russell–Einstein Manifesto.

Rotblat, who chaired the meeting, describes it as follows:

... It was thought that only a few of the Press would turn up and a small room was booked in Caxton Hall for the Press Conference. But it soon became clear that interest was increasing and the next larger room was booked. In the end the largest room was taken and on the day of the Conference this was packed to capacity with representatives of the press, radio and television from all over the world. After reading the Manifesto, Russell answered a barrage of questions from members of the press, some of whom were initially openly hostile to the ideas contained in the Manifesto. Gradually, however, they became convinced by the forcefulness of his arguments, as was evident in the excellent reporting in the Press, which in many cases gave front page coverage.

The manifesto called for a conference where scientists would assess the dangers posed to the survival of humanity by weapons of mass destruction (then only considered to be nuclear weapons). Emphasis was placed on the meeting being politically neutral. It extended the question of nuclear weapons to all people and governments. One particular phrase is quoted often, including by Rotblat upon receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest

10 July  The sinking of the Rainbow Warrior, codenamed Opération Satanique

it was an operation by the "action" branch of the French foreign intelligence services, the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE), carried out on 10 July 1985.

During the operation, two terrorists sank the flagship of the Greenpeace fleet, the Rainbow Warrior in the port of Auckland, New Zealand. The French government wanted to prevent the ship from interfering with a planned nuclear test in Moruroa. From then on many nuclear tests like that take place into the sea

Two French agents were arrested by the New Zealand Police on passport fraud and immigration charges. They were charged with arson, conspiracy to commit arson, willful damage, and murder. As part of a plea bargain, they pleaded guilty to manslaughter and were sentenced to ten years in prison, of which they served just over two. The resulting scandal resulted in the resignation of the French Defence Minister Charles Hernu

French agents posing as interested supporters or tourists toured the ship while it was open to public viewing. DGSE agent Christine Cabon, posing as environmentalist Frederique Bonlieu, volunteered to work in the Greenpeace office in Auckland. Cabon secretly monitored communications from the Rainbow Warrior, collected maps, and investigated underwater equipment, in order to provide information crucial to the sinking.

While the ship was initially evacuated, some of the crew returned to the ship to investigate and film the damage. A Portuguese-Dutch photographer, Fernando Pereira, returned below decks to fetch his camera equipment. At 11:45 p.m., the second bomb went off. Pereira drowned in the rapid flooding that followed, and the other ten crew members either safely abandoned ship on the order of Captain Peter Willcox or were thrown into the water by the second explosion. The Rainbow Warrior sank four minutes later.

Operation Satanique was a public relations disaster. France, being an ally of New Zealand, initially denied involvement and joined in condemning what it described as a terrorist act. The French Embassy in Wellington denied involvement, stating that "the French Government does not deal with its opponents in such ways".

After the bombing, the New Zealand Police started one of the country's largest police investigations. Most of the agents on the team escaped New Zealand, but two, Captain Dominique Prieur and Commander Alain Mafart were identified as possible suspects. Posing as the married couple, Sophie and Alain Turenge, Prieur and Mafart were identified with the help of a Neighborhood Watch group, and arrested. Both were questioned and investigated. While carrying Swiss passports, their true identities were discovered, along with the French government's responsibility.

11 July    Bobby Fischer V Boris Spassky in Reykjavík

The World Chess Championship 1972 was a match for the World Chess Championship between challenger Bobby Fischer of the United States and defending champion Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union. The match took place in the Laugardalshöll arena in Reykjavík, Iceland and has been dubbed the Match of the Century. Fischer became the first American born in the United States to win the world title, and the second American overall (Wilhelm Steinitz, the first world champion, became a naturalized American citizen in 1888). Fischer's win also ended, for a short time, 24 years of Soviet domination of the World Championship.

The first game was played on July 11, 1972. The last game began on August 31, was adjourned after 40 moves, and Spassky resigned the next day without resuming play. Fischer won the match 12½–8½, becoming the eleventh undisputed World Champion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_1972#Games

12 July   The Rolling Stones perform their first concert, at the Marquee Club in London

In the summer night on 12^th July 1962 the management of the Academy cinema on 165 Oxford Street in London thought it was wise to warn patrons that the film they were about to see, about some gigantic killer plants, "The Day of the Triffids"  contained "graphic horror" and might prove disturbing to those of a nervous disposition

But on that Thursday night, in a basement club called the Marquee, just a few feet below the cinema where the "Day of the Triffids" was screening, something much more unsettling was about to get under way. The "Night of the Rolling Stones"

A sober-suited crowd of about 80 men and 30 women were on hand to witness the Rolling Stones first gig. There was a taste among both sexes for shapeless, utility-style clothes, stout shoes and goofy square glasses. Based on the number of goatees in the photographs, many were also diehard jazz fans; those who were there report that the audience took some time to warm up to the Stones' 50-minute blast of American rhythm and blues.

The ambient smell in the room was one of boiled cabbage, ground deep into the audience's worsted jackets, and of the ubiquitous Players Weights cigarettes. The gig itself was a mixed success. The band downed scotches and brandies as they played to calm their nerves. After the show, the band went up through the foyer of the cinema, walked down the street unrecognised and had a drink in The Tottenham pub, near Tottenham Court tube station, leaving a friend of Jones's to hump the gear upstairs and load it on to a passing bus.

 They were joined by an acquaintance who had come to the gig, part-time drummer Charlie Watts, who thought the Stones "had an obvious appeal for the kids that wanted to dance. My band was a joke to look at, but this lot crossed the barrier. They actually looked like rock stars."

13 July    Swim for Peace

In July 1978, Walter Poenisch (pronounced pain-ish) celebrated his 65th birthday with Prime Minister Fidel Castro prior to embarking on his historic swim.

He drunk an orange juice and he started to swim at 6 o'clock in the afternoon from Havana and two days later he ended on July 13, 1978, when he reached Little Duck Key, Florida.

It was early morning when 65 years old Walter Poenisch, a retired cookery baker from Ohio, but world champion in long distance swimming, climbed aboard a small pilot boat where promptly fell asleep from exhaustion

150 yards from the Bahia Honda Bridge Key West Florida because the depth of the water where the swim ended was only 5 or 6 feet deep and the cage against the sharks no longer gave protection.

It was already damaged after 120 nautical miles swimming from Havana Cuba to Key West Florida U.S.A., the only parts remaining upright were a Cuban and a U.S. flag. It came apart under pressure of rough seas, including Gulf-Stream waves at times more than 8 feet high.

The courageous man has used his body to unite the two countries which he both loved so much, transforming his love into pure pottency under the training and care of his wife Faye

he crosses the Ocean, using his own body to make a Peace bridge across forever through his courageous life's effort, he swims for two nights and one day, crossing 128.8 miles in the ruthless sea in 34 hours and 15 minutes

to prove in this way that Peace is feasible when there is good will, and good will comes along with love for humanity, and that there is nothing which can divide the people on earth, like there is no sea that cannot be crossed.  

Many called Walter the granddaddy of ocean swimming. He set three world records: In 1972, he set the record for longest ocean swim of 90 3/4 miles in the Atlantic; in 1976, he set a record of 122 ½ miles for his bicentennial swim from the Florida Keys to the tip of the Florida peninsula; and the 1978 “Swim for Peace” from Cuba to the United States, all documented in the GUINNESS BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS. Walter also holds the record as the “World’s Strongest Endurance Swimmer” for such feats as towing 30-ton paddlewheel boats while swimming with his hands and feet shackled.

It took Walter fifteen years to gain the US Government and Castro’s approval to make his Cuba to Florida swim. The swim through the political bureaucracy to obtain approval led him to call it “Swim for Peace” or one man’s effort to bring two neighbors a step closer.

http://www.swim4peace.com/gallery.html

14 July La Fête Nationale   

14 July 1789 the Parisian crowd seized the Bastille, a symbol of royal tyranny and the French revolutions begins 

 The tricolour flag is derived from the cockades that were widely worn by revolutionaries.

The 3 main reasons that led in the french revolution are: (1) the increasingly prosperous elite of wealthy commoners—merchants, manufacturers, and professionals, often called the bourgeoisie—produced by the 18th century’s economic growth resented its exclusion from political power and positions of honour; (2) the peasants were acutely aware of their situation and were less and less willing to support the anachronistic and burdensome feudal system; (3) the philosophes, who advocated social and political reforms. These were couched in terms of Enlightenment ideals and caused the convocation of the Estates-General in May 1789.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité  was the motto of the revolution

In the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789  Liberty was defined as follows: Liberty consists of being able to do anything that does not harm others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of every man or woman has no bounds other than those that guarantee other members of society the enjoyment of these same rights.

Equality, on the other hand, was defined by the 1789 Declaration in terms of judicial equality and merit-based entry to government:[The law] "must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes. All citizens, being equal in its eyes, shall be equally eligible to all high offices, public positions and employments, according to their ability, and without other distinction than that of their virtues and talents."

The compatibility of Liberté and Égalité was not doubted in the first days of the Revolution, and the problem of the antecedence of one term on the other not lifted.Thus, the Abbé Sieyès considered that only liberty insured equality, unless the latter was to be the equality of all dominated by a despot; while liberty followed equality insured by rule of law.The abstract generality of law (theorized by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the The Social Contract) thus insured the identification of liberty to equality, liberty being negatively defined as an independence from arbitrary rule, and equality considered abstractly in its judicial form.

The third term, Fraternité, was the most problematic to insert in the triad, as it belonged to another sphere, that of moral obligations rather than rights, links rather than statutes, harmony rather than contract, and community rather than individuality. Various interpretations of Fraternité existed. The first one, according to Mona Ozouf, was one of "fraternité de rébellion" (Fraternity of Rebellion), that is the union of the deputies in the Jeu de Paume Oath of June 1789, refusing the dissolution ordered by the King Louis XVI "We swear never to separate ourselves from the National Assembly, and to reassemble wherever circumstances require, until the constitution of the realm is drawn up and fixed upon solid foundations." Fraternity was thus issued from Liberty and oriented by a common cause.

Another hesitation concerning the compatibility of the three terms arose from the opposition between liberty and equality as individualistic values, and fraternity as the realization of a happy community, devoided of any conflicts and opposed to any form of egotism. This fusional interpretation of Fraternity opposed it to the project of individual autonomy and manifested the precedence of Fraternity on individual will.

My interpretation is that every aspired intelligible triad in order to work out in a miraculous way, must be defined in a most inspiring way, by its cause, its power and its spirit.  Thus in the French Revolution  the cause is the need for Liberty which finds power in Equality and both thrive within the spirit of Fraternity.

15 July       Parthenon Marble Scalptures

215 years ago on a day like this in the summer of 1801 Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin and ambassador to the Ottoman Empire began extracting and expatriating the marble sculptures, inscriptions, and architectural pieces that were originally part of the temple of the Parthenon and other buildings on the Acropolis of Athens to Britain 

It is the Golden Age of Athens. A unique window of time that gives birth to Western ideals of Beauty, Schience, Art and a radical new  form of government, the Democracy.

To immortalise those ideals the Greeks built what would become the very Symbol of Western Civilisation, the Parthenon

Phidias was a native of Athens, the son of Charmisdas,born on 484 b.C. and flourished in his native city during the administration of Pericles, by whom his talents were fostered and rewarded, and who placed under his care the direction of the public works. To so high a degree of perfection did Phidias bring the sculptor's art, that the fragments which remain constitute a standard of perfection, and realise in the cold marble all the divine qualities of ideal beauty.

Greece for the world will always be the thinking Godess Athena who's resting her head thoughtfully on her spear, while
   "Acropolis   is the only place in the world that is inhabited at the same time  by  both "Spirit and  Courage"  Andre Malroe May 1959

Pure be his soul who enters this pure place,

and here his hands in lustral water laves

the good one drop will cleanse but for the base,

Ocean suffices not with all his waves   

(translation of an epigramm from an ancient Greek fountain)

"...so strange, you cannot feel the weight neither on their heads nor on the elbows nor on their necks but only on their stretched leg and the breast."      G. Seferis 'Days'

The Parthenon Marbles, also known as the Elgin Marbles is a collection of classical Greekmarble sculptures (mostly by Phidias and his assistants), inscriptions and architectural members that originally were part of the Parthenon and other buildings on the Acropolis of Athens.From 1801 to 1812, Elgin's agents removed about half of the surviving sculptures of the Parthenon, as well as architectural members and sculpture from the Propylaea and Erechtheum.

επι το εργον  (doing the job)    

The Marbles were transported by sea to Britain. In Britain, the acquisition of the collection was supported by some,while some critics compared Elgin's actions to vandalism or looting. The debate continues as to whether the Marbles should remain in the British Museum or be returned to Athens. 

 Minister of Culture Melina Mercouri has said "... I hope to see the Parthenon Marbles back in Athens before I die. But even if they come back later,             I will be born again..."

Bring Them Back in Athens

Acropolis    http://www.greecevirtual.gr/en/attiki/athens#/acropolis_1/

High at the head a branching olive grows
And crowns the pointed cliffs with shady boughs.
A cavern pleasant, though involved in night,
Beneath it lies, the Naiades delight:
Where bowls and urns of workmanship divine
And massy beams in native marble shine;
On which the Nymphs amazing webs display,
Of purple hue and exquisite array,
The busy bees within the urns secure 
Honey delicious, and like nectar pure. (Odyssey) 'Homer'

Give aid benignant in the needfull hour

and strength abundant to the reasoning power

and far avert the dize, unfriendly race

of councils impious, arrogant & bafe

(a kind of ancient pray to the Gods)

The Parthenon Marbles acquired by Elgin include some 17 figures from the statuary from the east and west pediments 15 (of an original 92) of the metope panels depicting battles between the Lapiths and the Centaurs, as well as 247 feet (or 75 m of an original 524 ft or 160 m) of the Parthenon Frieze which decorated the horizontal course set above the interior architrave of the temple. As such, they represent more than half of what now remains of the surviving sculptural decoration of the Parthenon.

Elgin's acquisitions also included objects from other buildings on the Athenian Acropolis: a Caryatid from Erechtheum; four slabs from the parapet frieze of the Temple of Athena Nike; and a number of other architectural fragments of the Parthenon, Propylaia, Erechtheum,  the Treasury of Atreus and the Temple of Athena Nike

Blessed, thrice blessed, who with winged speed

from Hyle's hoarse,  voracious barking flies

and leaving Earth's obscurity behind    

with a little leap directs his step to Thee

Just a little more and we shall see the almond trees in blossom.

The marbles shining in the sun.  The sea, the curling waves. Just a little more.

Let us rise just a little higher.                G.Seferis

Πώς να σωπάσω μέσα μου την ομορφιά του κόσμου;
Ο ουρανός δικός μου κι η θάλασσα στα μέτρα μου
Πώς να με κάνουν να τον δω τον ήλιο μ’ άλλα μάτια;
Στα ηλιοσκαλοπάτια μ’ έμαθε η μάνα μου να ζω...
Στου βούρκου μέσα τα νερά ποια γλώσσα μου μιλάνε 
αυτοί που μου ζητάνε να χαμηλώσω τα φτερά;   (Κωστα Κινδυνη)

How can I keep quite in me all the beauty of the world?

The sky was only mine and the sea was always in my measures

How can they make me see the sun with foreign eyes ?

For only in my sunsteps my mother  taught me I should live…

 What kind of language do they speak to me if they ask me

  to lower down my wings and live in gloomy shadow ?

Lord Byron  strongly objected to their removal from Greece, denouncing Elgin as a vandal. His point of view about the removal of the Marbles from Athens is also reflected in his poem "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage"

Dull is the eye that will not weep to see

Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed

By British hands, which it had best behoved

To guard those relics ne'er to be restored.

Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved,

And once again thy hapless bosom gored,

And snatch'd thy shrinking gods to northern climes abhorred!

 Elgin's son

 The 8th Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to China during the second Opium War, burned down the museum-quality Summer Palace of the Chinese emperor Xianfeng,  a baroque jewel and repository of priceless antiquities outside Peking. 

The destruction of the Summer Palace, known as Yuanminguyan or Yuen-Ming-Yuen by the Chinese, was the climactic act of the second of two Opium Wars (1839-1842 and 1856-1860) between Britain and China.

The order was given by Britain’s plenipotentiary to China, James Bruce, the eighth Earl of Elgin, a direct descendant of the Bruce and son of the seventh Earl who sent the Parthenon’s friezes to Britain.

Lord Elgin set fire to the emperor’s palace in retaliation for the mutilation and/or murder of 20 English and Indian POWS, who had been seized while under a flag of truce and imprisoned at the emperor’s weekend retreat just outside the walls of Peking.

Many tourists visit Acropolis Museam and Athens every year

16 July      From Here To Eternity

Apollo 11 launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 9:32 a.m. EDT on July 16, 1969. 

The Apollo spacecraft had three parts: a Command Module (CM) with a cabin for the three astronauts, and the only part that landed back on Earth; a Service Module (SM), which supported the Command Module with propulsion, electrical power, oxygen, and water; and a Lunar Module (LM) for landing on the Moon. 

   In addition to throngs of people crowding highways and beaches near the launch site, millions watched the event on television.

While in flight, the crew made two televised broadcasts from the interior of the ship, and a third transmission as they drew closer to the moon,  revealing the lunar surface and the intended approach path.

On July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin entered the lunar module, nicknamed the "Eagle" and separated from the Command Service Module — the "Columbia" — headed toward the lunar surface.  

The lunar module touched down on the moon's Sea of Tranquility, a large basaltic region, at 4:17 p.m. EDT. Armstrong notified Houston with the historic words, "Houston, this is Tranquility Base. The Eagle has landed."

For the first two hours, Armstrong and Aldrin checked all of the systems, configured the lunar module for the stay on the moon, and ate. They decided to skip the scheduled four-hour rest to explore the surface.

A camera in the Eagle provided live coverage as Armstrong descended down a ladder at 11:56 p.m. on July 20, 1969, and uttered the words, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

Aldrin followed twenty minutes later, with Armstrong recording his descent. Armstrong had the responsibility to document the landing, so most of the images taken from the Apollo 11 mission were of Aldrin.

While on the surface, the astronauts set up several experiments, collected samples of lunar soil and rock to bring home, erected a United States flag, took core samples from the crust and placed a plaque that stated:

HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH
FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON
JULY 1969, A.D.
WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND

Memorial medallions with the names of the three astronauts who perished in the Apollo 1 fire and two cosmonauts who were also deceased, including the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, remained after the astronauts left, as did a one-and-a-half-inch silicon disk with goodwill messages from 73 countries, and as the names of congressional and NASA leaders.

Armstrong spent a little over two and a half hours outside of the Eagle.

At 1:54 p.m. EDT, having spent a total of 21 and a half hours on the moon, the lunar module blasted back to where Collins sat in the Columbia. The two vehicles docked, and the crew and samples transferred to the Command Service Module before the Eagle was jettisoned into space. The astronauts headed back home.

The team splashed down in the Pacific Ocean at 12:50 p.m. EDT on July 24, only a few miles from the recovery ship, the U.S.S. Hornet.

After donning biological isolation garments, the crew left the Columbia and climbed into a rubber boat, where they were rubbed down with iodine in an effort to stem potential contamination. They traveled by helicopter to a Mobile Quarantine Facility aboard the ship before being taken to Houston.

They remained quarantine until Aug. 10, having completed the national goal set by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, to perform a crewed lunar landing and return to Earth.

17 July          It's Happy and is Yellow

Sunny  World Emoji Day today, created by Jeremy Burge, founder of Emojipedia 

because it famously features on the 'Calendar' emoji in iOS operating systems. This Sunday Twitter is encouraging people to celebrate by Tweeting their favourite emoji,

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3691923/What-emojis-say-country-Britain-favour-weary-faces-France-loves-heart-Germans-prefer-thumbs-up.html

In 17 July 1968 the world première of The Beatles' animated feature film, Yellow Submarine, took place on this evening at the London Pavilion on Piccadilly Circus.

After the première The Beatles went to a celebratory party at the Royal Lancaster Hotel, where the in-house discothèque was renamed Yellow Submarine for the occasion. It retained the name for several years after.

18 July             Day of Infallibility

The solemn declaration of papal infallibility by Vatican took place on 18 July 1870

Papal infallibility is a dogma of the Catholic Church that states that the Pope is preserved from the possibility of error "when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church." 

The use of this power is referred to as speaking ex cathedra. (This is from the ancient greek word "εξ καθεδρας" )

But more than 100 years later, on another 18 July  Nadia Elena Komaneci, tuned in the spirit of the Day, practically she attained the blessing of the infallability too and became the first gymnast to be awarded a perfect score of 10 in an Olympic gymnastics event 

At the age of 14, Comăneci became one of the stars of the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. During the team compulsory portion of the competition on July 18, her routine on the uneven bars was awarded a perfect ten.  It was the first time in modern Olympic gymnastics history that the score had ever been awarded.  Over the course of the Olympics, Comăneci would earn six additional tens, en route to capturing the all-around, beam, and bars titles

18 July     World Day of Nelson Mandela "As we let our own light shine, we unconciously give other people permission to do the same"N.Mandela

On this day of Infallibility Nelson Mandela was born in 1918 blessed with an inner light

"I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to see realised. But if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."- Rivonia Trial Speech, 1964

Nelson Mandela,  had been imprisoned for his beliefs 27 years in order to prevent his light not to be seen by the people 

 “A winner is a dreamer who never gives up”   

“ Great peacemakers are all people of integrity, of honesty, but humility. There is a universal respect and even admiration for those who are humble and simple by nature, and who have absolute confidence in all human beings irrespective of their social status.” ― Nelson Mandela, Conversations With Myself

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me.” Nelson Mandela

 British Pop song "Free Nelson Mandela" composed by Jerry Dammers helped a lot ! Mandela never forgot the debt he owed to supporters in the United Kingdom. In 1996 he used a speech to both Houses of Parliament in London to give his thanks: "We take this opportunity once more to pay tribute to the millions of Britons who, through the years, stood up to say: No to apartheid!" In 2008, singer Amy Winehouse joined Dammers for the finale to a concert in London's Hyde Park marking Mandela's 90th birthday. The song's message had long since been realized -- and indeed the by-then-frail elder statesman appeared onstage -- but it was received as warmly as ever.

“A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special.” 
― Nelson Mandela

19 July    The Boss rocked East Berlin in July 1988 in front a river of three hundrent thousand young, enthusiastic people   

and the Berlin Wall  cracked and fell  the following year

“Bruce Springsteen played an amazing concert – four hours long. It went straight to their hearts.” But what added the political impetus was that in the middle of it, Springsteen  spoke in German “I am not for or against a government.  I’ve come to play rock and roll for you, in the hope that one day all barriers will be torn down.” He was greeted with a roar of approval

 "It was a nail in the coffin for EastGermany," said Jörg Beneke, who was there that day. They had never heard a message like that.  Here was this big, famous American rock star who came into the middle of East Germany, into East Berlin, and told them he hoped that the wall would come down one day"

Even now, many who were there that night talk about it as a life-changing moment. "There was this underlying sentiment in the crowd that night that people didn't want to live behind a wall anymore" ...the Boss has ignited the spark to start the fire into their hearts as they were dancing together in the dark

  "It was gradually dawning on everyone between about 20 and 30 years old that things couldn't just continue in East Germany the way they had been going. Something had to change. And when Springsteen came, his concert fitted right into all that."Andrea Dubois, then a 27-year-old scientist said "I was blown away by his presence and the way he was not just playing fantastic music but performing and interacting with the audience and he did do that at this concert. Even where you have hundreds of thousands of people, he manages to relate to people as though he's speaking to each of us 

Years later, Springsteen reflected on the concert himself. "Once in a while you play a place, you play a show that ends up staying inside of you, living with you for the rest of your life," he said. "East Berlin in 1988 was certainly one of them."

20 July