Friday, January 27, 1967: Apollo 1

A flash fire occurred in command module 012 during a launch pad test of the Apollo/Saturn space vehicle being prepared for the first piloted flight, the AS-204 mission. Three astronauts, Lt. Col. Virgil I. Grissom, a veteran of Mercury and Gemini missions; Lt. Col. Edward H. White, the astronaut who had performed the first United States extravehicular activity during the Gemini program; and Roger B. Chaffee, an astronaut preparing for his space flight, died.

     -- Summary, photo by NASA: @

* "Report of Apollo 2014 Review Board" (NASA, April 1967): @

* "Apollo 204 Accident" (report of the Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences, U.S. Senate, January 1968): @
* "3 Apollo Astronauts Die In Fire; Grissom, White, Chaffee Caught in Capsule During A Test on Pad" (New York Times): @

* "Three Apollo Spacemen Die As Blaze Sweeps Moonship" (Associated Press): @
* Life magazine, February 3, 1967: @
* Life, February 10: @

* "Apollo 1: The Fatal Fire" (www.space.com): @
* "Apollo 1: The Fire That Shocked NASA" (Scientific American): @
* Summary (Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum): @
* "Space Tragedy: Astronauts Die in Apollo Fire" (Universal Newsreel): @
* ABC News report: @ 

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January 1967: 'The Peter Principle'

"The Peter Principle" first appeared as an article in Esquire magazine in January 1967; two years later, Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull turned the material into a best-selling book.

The most memorable tenet -- "in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence" -- was supplemented by Peter's Corollary ("in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties") and, lastly, "Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence."

* Esquire, January 1967 (online subscription required): @

* "The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong" (1969 book): @

* "How the Peter Principle Works" (money.howstuffworks.com): @

* Peter obituary (New York Times, January 1990): @

* "Laurence Peter" (The Economist, January 2009): @

* "Lawrence J. Peter & Raymond Hull" (Literary Landmarks, Vancouver Public Libary; includes links to short biographies of Peter and Hull): @
* "Overcoming the Peter Principle" (Andrea Ovans, Harvard Business Review, December 2014): @ 

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Saturday, January 14, 1967: 'Human Be-In'

SAN FRANCISCO -- Anybody who was nobody was there.

     And if there were any anybodys, nobody knew.

     It was the city's biggest social event of the season but it failed to make the society pages.

     It was a happening.

     It took place Saturday at the polo field in Golden Gate Park. They were all there -- the hippy denizens of the Haight-Asbury District and outlying regions, the activists from Berkeley, the Hells Angles, students, beatniks, toddlers. Thirteen thousand of them under a sunny sky.

     And about 2,000 spectators, some of them bemused, some completely dumbfounded. The police also sent a delegation, mainly to ticket dozens of illegally parked cars.

     Word of the event began circulating earlier this month in the Haight-Asbury, home for many of the city's far-out types. It was billed as a "human Be-In" and a "Gathering of the Tribes," a get-together for political activists and hippies. The public was also invited and asked to bring "costumes, blankets, bells, flags, symbols, drums, beads, feathers and flowers."

     -- Story by United Press International

     -- Photo by Ted Streshinsky

* "Reliving the Human Be-In 50 Years Later" (San Francisco Chronicle, January 2017): @

* Summary from California Historical Society: @

* Description from Peter Coyote: @

* "Human Be-In in San Francisco 1967" (The Allen Ginsberg Project, July 2011): @

* "The Human Be-In" (Helen Perry, 1970): @

* "The Beginning is the Human Be-In" (Berkeley Barb, January 6, 1967): @
* "What Happened at the Hippening" (Berkeley Barb, January 20, 1967): @
* Footage: @ and @

* Photos by Larry Kennan: @

* Poster (Oakland Museum of California): @ 

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Thursday, January 12, 1967: Cryogenics

Phoenix, Arizona -- The body of an elderly California professor who died of cancer will arrive here this week for storage in a steel capsule at 220 degrees below zero centigrade for an experiment in bringing persons back from the dead, it was learned today.

     Identity of the professor was not disclosed, but the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner said friends reported he was Dr. James Bedford, 73, of Glendale, who died last Thursday.

     The Cryonics Society of California is conducting the experiment. When a cure for cancer is found, the body of the professor will be thawed and an attempt made to revive him, the experimenters said.

     -- United Press International, January 19, 1967. Full story: @

     -- Photo: Robert F. Nelson, left, president of the Cryonics Society of California, and physician-biophysicist Dr. Dante Branol demonstrate the cryogenic freezing process in 1967. Photo by J.R. Eyerman.

* "The cold way to new life" (Life magazine, January 27, 1967): @
* "The First Suspension" (Alcor Life Extension Foundation, 1991): @

* "Inside the Immortality Business" (Josh Dean, 2013): @
* "Freezing People Is (Not) Easy: My Adventures in Cryonics" (Bob Nelson, 2014): @

* "Into the Deep Freeze: What Kind of Person Chooses to Get Cryonically Preserved?" (California magazine, 2015): @
* "50 years frozen: The world's first cryonically preserved human's disturbing journey to immortality" (Quartz, 2017): @

* "Cool dude James Bedford has been cryonically frozen for 50 years" (CNET, 2017): @

* Cryonics Institute: @
* Earlier post on "The Prospect of Immortality" (1964): @

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