July 24th
At 12:50 in the afternoon Eastern time on July 24, 1969, a scorched capsule named Columbia slammed into the Pacific Ocean about 900 miles southwest of Hawaii — and the greatest voyage in human history was over. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins had punched back into Earth’s atmosphere at nearly 25,000 miles per hour, their heat shield glowing at thousands of degrees, before three orange-and-white parachutes bloomed over the water. The capsule actually hit the waves and flipped upside down — until flotation bags inflated and bobbed the three moon men right side up again.
But NASA wasn’t taking any chances with what they might have brought back. Navy frogmen from the USS Hornet reached the capsule first and passed in three Biological Isolation Garments — sealed gray suits with gas-mask-style hoods — because scientists couldn’t yet rule out “moon germs.” The astronauts zipped in, climbed into a raft, got scrubbed down with disinfectant, and were hoisted by helicopter to the Hornet’s deck, where a banner read simply: “Hornet + 3.”
Then came one of the strangest victory laps ever staged. Instead of a podium, the three most famous men on Earth walked straight into a converted Airstream trailer — the Mobile Quarantine Facility — and the door sealed behind them. President Richard Nixon was waiting on the hangar deck and greeted them through the trailer’s rear window, grinning and declaring it “the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation.” The heroes of Apollo 11 waved back through the glass like exhibits in the world’s most exclusive aquarium.
They stayed in quarantine for three weeks, until doctors declared them free of lunar contagion on August 10. Three days later, New York City buried them in one of the largest ticker-tape parades ever thrown, with millions packing the streets. Eight days, three hours, and 18 minutes after leaving Florida, the astronauts were home — and the promise President Kennedy made in 1961, to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to the Earth, was kept in full. Safely home was always the second half of the deal.
Also On This Day…
1974 — The Supreme Court Orders Nixon to Hand Over the Tapes Five years to the day after Richard Nixon stood on that carrier deck basking in Apollo 11’s glory, the Supreme Court ended his presidency. On July 24, 1974, the Court ruled 8-0 in United States v. Nixon that the president had to surrender his secret White House recordings to the Watergate special prosecutor — executive privilege, the justices held, could not shield evidence in a criminal case. Among the tapes was the “smoking gun” recording proving Nixon had ordered the cover-up. Sixteen days after the ruling, he resigned. July 24 gave Nixon his brightest hour and his death blow — exactly five years apart.
1959 — Nixon and Khrushchev Argue in a Model Kitchen And incredibly, July 24 had already ambushed Nixon once before. On this day in 1959, then-Vice President Nixon squared off with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev at an American exhibition in Moscow — inside a model American kitchen, stocked with the dishwashers and gadgets of an ordinary suburban home. The two men jabbed fingers and traded barbs over whether capitalism or communism delivered a better life, as cameras rolled. The “Kitchen Debate” made Nixon a Cold War star — and the argument was settled less by missiles than by washing machines.
1911 — Machu Picchu Is Revealed to the World On July 24, 1911, a Yale lecturer named Hiram Bingham hauled himself up a steep, snake-infested slope in the Peruvian Andes, led by a local farmer who’d agreed to guide him for about 50 cents. Near the top, a young boy walked him along a ridge — and Bingham stared out at Machu Picchu, a lost city of the Incas draped in five centuries of jungle. Local families were quietly farming its ancient terraces, but the outside world had no idea it existed. Bingham’s photographs stunned the globe, and the “Lost City in the Clouds” became one of the wonders of the Earth.
1847 — “This Is the Right Place” On July 24, 1847, a wagon rolled out of a canyon mouth in the Rocky Mountains and stopped at the edge of a vast, empty valley beside a dead salt sea. Inside, weakened by fever, lay Brigham Young — leader of the Mormon pioneers who had trekked more than a thousand miles across the plains to escape persecution. Young looked out over the Salt Lake Valley and said the words every Utah schoolchild still learns: “It is enough. This is the right place. Drive on.” Salt Lake City rose on that spot, and Utah still celebrates July 24 as Pioneer Day, a full state holiday.
1701 — A Frenchman Named Cadillac Founds Detroit On July 24, 1701, French officer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac stepped ashore with about a hundred settlers and soldiers on the narrows between Lake Erie and Lake Huron, and founded Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit — “the strait.” The fur-trading post grew into Detroit, the city that would one day put America on wheels. And two centuries later, when a new automobile company formed there in 1902, it honored the city’s founder by taking his name: Cadillac.
From a scorched capsule bobbing in the Pacific, to a Supreme Court ruling that toppled the same president who’d waved at the astronauts through quarantine glass, to a wagon stopping at the edge of the Salt Lake Valley — July 24th is the day journeys end: sometimes in triumph, sometimes in resignation, and once in a trailer on an aircraft carrier.
