Update: With a mass outpouring of donations and kind words overnight, we've come within a few hundred dollars of our goal. We'll end the fundraiser after today and give what we have to the building owners and hopefully the crisis will be over tomorrow. I can't begin to express my gratitude and admiration for all of you who have made donations. Your contributions have all made a huge difference and I am so blown away by the responses. It is sometimes difficult to know, working on posts all day and usually with only the computer screen as an audience, to tell if any of the historic materials I've been offering these last few years have been seen or have been of any help to anyone. The past 10 days of this fundraiser have proven there are a lot of you out there and that makes this decades-long quest for archiving and preserving history completely worth it. I'll be here as long as you're here. If you are still interested in making a contribution, I'm still in heavy appeal-mode for the rest of the day. As always, any amount you feel comfortable with is enormous to me. My deepest and most heartfelt thanks to you all.

This May Day in 1961 had ominous tones for the future - although at the time it didn't sound that way. The news for this day was the crisis in Southeast Asia, specifically the dispute between Laos and Cambodia. Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia had proposed a 14 nation Political Conference to the King of Laos in an effort to diffuse the situation. The proposal was rejected and Sihanouk then called for ceasefire talks to begin.

Meanwhile, President Kennedy was being apprised of the situation in South Vietnam via a recently concluded Military fact finding mission to the area.

On the Domestic front - Commerce Secretary Luther Hodges was quoted as saying the Communist Economic offensive was a matter of grave concern to the Free World, with obvious hints towards the situation in Latin America. Elsewhere - it was reported the Unemployment figures in the U.S. were regarded as "intolerable" by Capitol Hill.

On an upbeat note - Scientists at Cape Canaveral were weighting weather conditions for a scheduled launch of he first manned-Space flight by the U.S. - the flight was slated to go on May 2nd, if all signs were good.

And Jordan's King Hussein announced via Radio Aman that he was engaged to "the woman of his dreams" - a commoner who also happened to be the daughter of a British Army Officer. Hussein also added that yes, she was a Muslim - so not to worry.

And that's what this May 1st was mostly about in 1961 as reported by NBC News On The Hour.

Fifty years ago today, just about every kid in every school around the country was herded into an auditorium, or had a TV or radio carted into their classroom and sat, glued to the spectacle going on in front of them for the better part of that day. Nothing else went on, it wasn't business as usual. We were busy witnessing something.

I'd like to say it seemed like yesterday but no, it really does seem like fifty years ago. John Glenn and his apt named space capsule Friendship 7 were doing something we only imagined before this day and it was borne out of that curiosity that was so prevalent in the Post-World War 2 era and The New Frontier of the Kennedy Years. Part of it was a result of the Cold War and our desire to be Number One in All Things Adventuresome. But most of it really was doing something that just hadn't been done before. Those of us who had our heads buried in the latest Science Fiction book or TV show or magazine article just thought it was the next logical step in Art versus Reality.

We were primed for this for a while. Ever since Alan Shepherd the year before, we knew it was only a matter of time. But there was also that thing in the back of our heads that asked "what if it goes wrong? What it if explodes? What if he's stuck up there?". We didn't really know what to expect.

But enough time has passed and enough discoveries have been made so we can now look at this particular day, unfolding long before most readers were born and shrug "not that big a deal". Hindsight is a lot more confident than the reality of the moment. And at that moment in 1962 the uncertainty prompted an otherwise staid announcer to yell "Go Baby, Go!", triggering an excited squeal from my elementary school auditorium and an admonishment from the school Principal that the TV would be turned off if we didn't calm down.

And that's how history presented itself on this day in 1962. The uncertainty of the future and the excitement of the possibilities. Even a Fifth Grader knew that.

Here is an excerpt of that day recapped via an NBC Radio Special report for February 20, 1962.

This day 50 years ago the Space Race heated up. Hot on the heels of the Soviet accomplishment, sending their first astronaut (Cosmonaut) Yuri Gagarin into space in April, America quickly followed suit by sending Alan Shepard, America's first astronaut into space.

Here is the sound of the launch from May 5, 1961 and the first Press Conference Shepard delivered on May 8th where he recapped the flight to an overflow crowd of reporters.

A large page of history was made on this day and space became the biggest thing on peoples minds.

. . .and if you don't mind . .