March 6th was the birthday of Leroy Gordon “Gordo” Cooper Jr., born in 1927 in Shawnee, Oklahoma. This U.S. Air Force pilot and astronaut was aboard Mercury 9 and Gemini 5. Cooper had his exploits well documented in Tom Wolfe’s book The Right Stuff [1], and in the well-done film of the same name [2]. Cooper died at age 77 from heart failure at his home in Ventura, California, October 4, 2004.
Coincidentally, this is also the birthday of Valentina Tereshkova (born 1937), a Soviet cosmonaut and the first woman in space, aboard Vostok 6. She was born in Maslennikovo, USSR.
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Today we present a short guest article by reader A.B.S., titled Multi-Caliber Weapons for Survival. It was too short to meet the 1,500-word minimum for our bimonthly nonfiction writing contest [3], so he asked that it be posted as a guest piece.