Good evening.

A number of historic events took place over the last few days.


Of course, the big one was the 113th anniversary of the Titanic sinking, over April 14-15.

But 58 years later, a more contemporary disaster nearly occurred. It is of course, Apollo 13.

It was launched on April 11, coincidentally the same day that Titanic had set sail for New York.

And like Titanic, as Apollo 13 was nearing her destination, an accident happened.

April 15, 1970 - some 210,000 miles from the safety of Earth, an oxygen tank exploded on board. All of NASA's resources, and much more, were thrown in in a valiant attempt to save those astronauts.

Of course it was successful. The Apollo crew landed safely back on Earth on April 17, 1970. Not quite in line with Titanic this time - Carpathia arrived in New York with the Titanic's survivors on April 18.

In 1995, Ron Howard made a terrific movie telling the dramatic story.

At that time, my Great Uncle Ray Moore was still alive. He entertained us one afternoon by the pool about how he took home all the equipment from Draper Labs, left them overnight in his pickup, then put an ammeter to them to see how much power everything would draw from a cold start.

We laughed it off as the memories of an old man.

But not long after that, I read Jim Lovell's book Lost Moon, in which he noted many of the anonymous people that had worked to save the crew of Apollo 13. He mentioned a Draper Lab technician that took all the electronics home and left them outside on a cold New England spring night, so he could see how much power everything drew from a cold start.

Yeah, knock TriSec over with a feather. MY UNCLE.

In fact, when Uncle Ray passed in 2012, I was reminiscing with my cousin, and he showed me a framed presentation from the director of NASA, personally thanking my Uncle. It included a microscopic sliver of an actual moon rock - perhaps one of the few samples in civilian hands today.

But this got me all to thinking.

The events of Apollo 13 happened 53 years ago. We did have such a thing as a cold April night in those days.

The past week - the anniversary of these things - it was 85 degrees in Boston, and night-time temperatures only dropped to the 60s.

I probably think my uncle would have had to come up with a different way if a similar accident happened today.