The Norge was a semi-rigid Italian-built airship that carried out the first verified trip of any kind to the North Pole, an overflight on 12 May 1926. It was also the first aircraft to fly over the polar ice cap between Europe and America. The expedition was the brainchild of polar explorer and expedition leader Roald Amundsen, the airship’s designer and pilot Umberto Nobile and the wealthy American adventurer and explorer Lincoln Ellsworth who, along with the Norwegian Aviation Society, financed the trip, which was known as the Amundsen-Ellsworth 1926 Transpolar Flight. Wikipedia
Earthrise is a photograph of Earth and part of the Moon‘s surface that was taken from lunar orbit by astronaut William Anders on December 24, 1968, during the Apollo 8 mission.[1][2][3] Nature photographer Galen Rowell described it as “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken”.[4]
STS-1 (Space Transportation System-1) was the first orbital spaceflight of NASA‘s Space Shuttle program. The first orbiter, Columbia, launched on April 12, 1981,[1] and returned on April 14, 1981, 54.5 hours later, having orbited the Earth 37 times. Columbia carried a crew of two—commander John W. Young and pilot Robert L. Crippen. It was the first American crewed space flight since the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) in 1975. STS-1 was also the maiden test flight of a new American spacecraft to carry a crew, though it was preceded by atmospheric testing (ALT) of the orbiter and ground testing of the Space Shuttle system.
The launch occurred on the 20th anniversary of Vostok 1, the first human spaceflight, performed by Yuri Gagarin for the USSR. This was a coincidence rather than a celebration of the anniversary; a technical problem had prevented STS-1 from launching two days earlier, as was planned.