Thursday, July 21, 2011

Actually, I do this sometimes too

The German rocket scientists took a while to get used to Huntsville, Alabama:
At first, every time a shopgirl in a department store at the end of a transaction said "Y'all hurry on back now, hear?" a German would immediately turn around and return to the cash register.
--Craig Nelson, Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon, at 111.

... A pretty good book, written in 2009 and thus able to piggyback on a great deal of secondary literature. (This one had the advantage of being $5.98 on the bargain table at Barnes & Noble, as well.) Despite the title, the book's middle portion goes from Goddard up through Mercury and Gemini, picking its high points. It's also good on the engineers and their technological achievement.

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