JANUARY 31st - Beginnings Are Not Small Things or So Easy a Chimp Could Do It



On this day in 1961, Ham became the first chimp to reach space while aboard the Mercury Redstone rocket. People say things like “so easy a monkey could do it”--which is a stupid thing to say considering that monkeys can actually do numerous things that most humans cannot. When was the last time you swung from a tree or walked across a wire as easily as that little monkey from The Hangover 2 or threw your own feces at someone? Okay then. But Ham didn’t just sit in a tin can and get to experience a few minutes of weightlessness. He wasn’t an astrophysicist or anything, but he did have to learn how and when to push a lever. Sounds pretty easy? Well consider being a chimpanzee getting shot into space? Not that easy anymore is it? Plus, even it was rather simple, he was the first of his kind to go to space. Space. Have you been to space? I haven’t. I just saw The Martian. It was pretty good. Not sure it should have been classified as a comedy at the Golden Globes, but there were jokes. Still, I haven’t been to space. But Ham has. And because he did, the second chimp in space, Enos, orbited the Earth. Then John Glenn did too. Then Neil Armstrong got to walk on the moon. And eventually maybe someone like Mark Watney will step foot on Mars. And it will be because of something so easy that a chimp could do it. So thank you, Ham the Space Chimp. Because beginnings are not small things.

This Day has been Marked.

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