The balls didn’t actually go for miles. Shepard later gave his estimate to be about 200 to 400 yards. Considering that he swung with one hand in a suit that restricted movement, with a rigged six iron, it wasn’t a bad shot. The golf shot was unplanned and unauthorized. Shepard smuggled the golf club head inside his uniform.

The Apollo 14 mission was the first mission after the failed Apollo 13 mission. Alan Shepard along with Edgar Mitchell became the 5th and 6th man to walk on the moon. Stuart Roosa orbited the moon in the Command Module.

The mission lasted from January 31 to February 9, 1971. Shepard and Mitchell spent 33 1/2 hours on the moon. Nine hours and 23 minutes was spent outside of the Lunar Capsule.

This was Shepard’s second and final time in space. Ten years earlier on May 5, 1961, he became the first American to travel into space when he piloted Freedom 7. That flight was a sub-orbital flight which carried him to an altitude of 116 statute miles. With the Apollo 14 mission he became the only astronaut from Project Mercury to reach the moon. At 47, he also was the oldest to walk on the moon.

For Shepard the mission was a personal triumph. He had been grounded from 1964 to 1968 from Ménière’s disease, a condition in which fluid pressure builds up in the inner ear. An operation performed in 1968 was able to remedy the problem and he was allowed to fly again. Even though Alan B. Shepard never intended to be a hero, he was one.

The Hewlett-Packard HP-35 was first introduced on February 1, 1972 and was the first handheld electronic calculator sold by HP. It was also the first handheld ever to perform logarithmic and trigonometric functions with one keystroke.

Digital Watches are introduced.

Atari was founded in June 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney and they install the first prototype of the video game Pong at Andy Capps Bar in September of the same year.

Pepsi-Cola introduced the Twelve-pack.

Woody Guthrie may have died in 1967, but The Woody Guthrie Foundation was founded in 1972. The foundation serves as administrator and caretaker of the Woody Guthrie Archives.

No one knows the exact day not year of Jesus’ birth. With Bible references it is thought that he was born around 4 BC in the spring. Shepherds bring their sheep in during the winter and not tend to them as related in the Bible.

Christmas was not celebrated in the early days of the American Colonies. In some places the practice of celebrating Christmas was actually banned. It wasn’t until the Victorian times that it restored with a lot of assistance from Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, Clement Moore’s ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas and the Santa drawings of Thomas Nast.

Santa Claus is a fairly modern invention although he has basis in history. There was a St. Nicholas, a third century saint. But it’s the Dutch Sinterklaas that is the biggest basis. The Sinterklaas feast celebrates the birthday of Saint Nicholas. In 1809 Washington Irving’s Knickerbocker’s History of New York features Sinterklaas.

Bing Crosby has not one but three of the biggest Christmas recording. Everyone knows that his White Christmas was a big hit, but so was his recording of Silent Night in 1935 and I’ll Be Home for Christmas first recorded in 1943 were also big hits. Crosby donated all of his royalties from Silent Night to charity.

The city of North Pole, Alaska with a population of 1750 and located 14 miles southeast of Fairbanks was incorporated on January 15, 1953. The name was selected in an effort to attract business. Many streets bear holiday names: Santa Claus Lane, Snowman Lane, Kris Kringle, Mistletoe, Holiday Rd., Saint Nicholas Drive, North Star Drive, Blitzen, and Donnor. northpolealaska.com

The ampersand (&) is actually a stylized version of the Latin word “et,” meaning and.

The only capital letter in the Roman alphabet with exactly one endpoint is P.

The letters H I O X in the Latin alphabet look the same if you turn them upside down or see them from behind.

On a telephone dial there are no letters associated with the 1 and 0 and the letters Q and Z are not there.

The first number when written out that contains an ‘A’ is One Thousand.

St. Augustine Florida is the oldest continuous settlement in the United States. It was originally a Spanish settlement as well as its oldest port. St. Augustine was founded by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés on September 8, 1565.

The first English child born in America was Virgina Dare who was born on August 18, 1587. She was born shortly after a colony was established on Roanoke Island in present-day North Carolina. John White, the Roanoke colony’s governor was her Grandfather. White returned to England to get supplies and when he returned the colony had disappeared never be discovered what had become of the Colony nor Virginia Dare.

The Dutch under the leadership of Peter Stuyvesant controlled the American coast between New York (They founded New Amsterdam, New York’s original name in 1525) and the mouth of the Delaware Day. Dutch settlements on the western shores of the Delaware Bay is one of the reasons that Delaware was not part of the Maryland Colony.

During the Revolutionary War Florida (at the time two separate colonies, East and West Florida) was an English Colony. Spain had lost Florida to England during the French Indian War that ended in 1761. East and West Florida would return to Spanish rule in 1783.

On July 16, 1769 Junípero Serra found a mission at San Diego. This was the first of 21 missions founded along California’s pacific coast.

The Maryland Colony began with a failed attempt by George Calvert, the First Lord Baltimore, in Newfoundland. Calvert had been the Secretary of State under King James the I and he had requested a chance to build a colony in the New World. The “Province of Avalon” began settlement in 1623. In 1628 Calvert moved to the settlement with the intention of remaining there for the rest of his days. The winter of 1628-29 was much worst than he expected and he returned to England. He still desired a colony in the New World and began the process that would become the Maryland Charter.

This petition is known as the Olive Branch Petition and it was signed on July 8, 1775.

John Dickinson, a delegate from Pennsylvania, was the leader of the group opposed to war with England, had convinced the Congress to pursue reconciliation.

As with the Declaration of Independence the 1st draft of the petition was authored by Thomas Jefferson. But Dickinson felt that Jefferson’s language was too offensive and rewrote much of it himself.

Many of those who voted for and signed the Declaration a year later would sign their name to this document. These included Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Caesar Rodney, Roger Sherman, John Adams and John Hancock.

The petition was rejected and on August 23, 1775 a Proclamation of Rebellion was issued by England declaring elements of the American colonies in “open and avowed rebellion” and ordered officials of the British Empire “to use their utmost endeavours to withstand and suppress such rebellion”.