NHAS - Today in Astronomy History

	1931	Johannes Winkler of Germany's Verein fur Raumschiffahrt (Society for Space Travel) launches Europe's first liquid fuel rocket. It achieves an altitude of about 10 feet.
	1938	American astronomer George Ellery Hale dies. Hale was instrumental in the founding the Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, he was the first professor of astrophysics at the University of Chicago, and was the first astronomer to be officially called an astrophysicist. At the age of 21 he invented the spectroheliograph, which made it possible to photograph the Sun's prominences in full daylight. He later founded the Mt. Wilson Observatory near Pasadena, California.
	1963	The electronics on the US Telstar 1 communications satellite are knocked out by an atomic bomb test on Earth.
	1969	The first launch of the Soviet N1 rocket, the intended launch vehicle for the USSR's manned lunar landing program, ends in failure when the engines shut down 69 seconds into the flight.