Monday 19 August 2024

This man walked in space

Cet homme a marché dans l'espace was the headline in the Paris Match edition from 27th March 1965.  How do I know this?  Because yesterday, up in my mother's garage, I was holding this magazine in my hands, having discovered it (and a few others from that era) lurking in an old box.

The guy's name was Alexi Arkhipovich Leonov, a Russian Cosmonaut
- the first man to conduct a space walk (which lasted 12 minutes and 9 seconds).
 

I'm guessing my father must have subscribed to Paris Match at a time; he was always interested in European languages and did all he could to keep up his knowledge of French, Italian, German and Spanish, having travelled all over Europe in his bachelor days - on his Triumph motorbike

Space exploration really took off in the 60s, of course and magazines like this would have offered readers a glimpse into these historic events - in colour.  It was still a few years before colour TVs became commonplace in Ireland.  We got our first colour set around June of 1976 and I remember being amazed by the fact that the tennis courts at Wimbledon were a vibrant green - who'd have guessed! 




From 1963 we have this edition which covered the coronation of Pope Paul VI - who looks like he's either about to go into space (or just arrived from space):


When I get time, I'll post some phone shots of the contents of these magazines.  For now, I've left them with my mother to peruse.


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