Kuiper throws his very own ticker tape parade. Watch til the end for Yakety Sax. ?
On this day in 1969, the Apollo 11 astronauts were honored by not one, but TWO ticker tape parades!! After their 1st parade in New York City, the astronauts and their families flew to Chicago for their 2nd parade. Then they proceeded to Los Angeles to have dinner with President Nixon. What a day!
According to the NYT article from 50 years ago tomorrow, “Surging Crowds Fill the Streets in New York,” the city’s Public Events Commissioner estimated that the NYC crowd totaled around four million, “the biggest ever in the history of New York.”
Upon arriving at City Hall, the astronauts were serenaded by the First United States Army Band’s rendition of Also Sprach Zarathustra (that’s the music from the movie 2001, released in 1968.) Mayor John Lindsay then proclaimed, “This is one of New York City’s great moments.” Article excerpt:
“The ‘true mission’ of Apollo 11, Mr. Lindsay said, was ‘to show us again what mankind can do.’ The Mayor then dwelled on ‘the wonders that await us at home, if we choose to make them real,’ in the struggles against poverty, pollution of air and water, and war among nations….
On 42nd Street the confetti — made up more of paper towels and pages from telephone directories than tickertape* — was so dense that the astronauts could hardly see or be seen as the motorcade turned east.
Office workers perched precariously on parapets. Inspired by the astronauts, some of them seemed to be trying to defy gravity as they leaned out over the street to snap photographs.
A Sikh in a turban turned to a woman in a pink sari and observed, ‘This is a typical New York scene.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ retorted a woman in a tight blue dress. ‘We don’t have astronauts coming back from the moon every day.'”
(* Tickertape was already well on the way to being phased out)
Original post: https://www.instagram.com/p/B1ILJTol0IS/