Reading 3 of 5 free1776 Club · all 5 storiesSaturday, October 3
From the desk
Start with 1962: Walter Schirra rode Sigma 7 through six orbits testing whether the hardware itself could last, not just the man inside it, and came down under half a mile from the carrier Kearsarge after burning less fuel than anyone expected. That margin is why NASA greenlit a full day in orbit the next year. Worth a longer look: Lincoln's 1863 Thanksgiving proclamation, written mid-war with instructions to pray for the nation's widows and orphans, not just its victories. Washington had set the same date in 1789, proof some customs take two presidents to become habits.
— The Patriot Compass desk
1962Featured · This day in history
Schirra rides Sigma 7 into orbit, six times around on the Mercury program's first full-day test
By October 1962, NASA had put two Americans into orbit, but never for more than a few turns of the globe. On October 3, an Atlas booster lifted Walter Schirra and his capsule Sigma 7 off the pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, for a six-orbit endurance test of the hardware itself. Nine hours and thirteen minutes later, Sigma 7 splashed down in the Pacific less than half a mile from the recovery carrier USS Kearsarge. Schirra used less fuel than engineers had planned for, and Schirra used less fuel than engineers had planned for, evidence the hardware could handle more time in orbit, and NASA used the result to plan a full day in orbit the following year.
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, FloridaStory page →
The American Throughline
Sigma 7's fuel-sparing, nearly flawless flight gave NASA the engineering confidence to schedule Mercury-Atlas 9 as a full day-long mission in 1963, the final step before Gemini and Apollo. It mattered less in the headlines than Glenn's flight had, because three weeks later the Cuban Missile Crisis consumed the nation's attention, the Cuban Missile Crisis simply crowded the flight off the front page.
Did you know
QWhat nickname did Schirra give the capsule when it ran entirely on autopilot?
Crossing over Mexico, Schirra radioed that he was in "chimp configuration," a wry jab at the fact that the Mercury program had first tested its capsules with trained chimpanzees before putting humans aboard. With the spacecraft flying itself on automatic systems and no pilot input required, Schirra was, by his own joke, just along for the ride like the chimps before him. It was a pilot's way of noting how much of the mission depended on hardware rather than his own hands.
QWhat star-navigation experiment gave Schirra more trouble than expected?
During the dark half of his second orbit, Schirra tried using first the Moon and then known stars as fixed points to practice yaw maneuvers. The Moon worked fine, but the stars did not: the Mercury capsule's windows were so small that they gave only a narrow field of view, making it difficult to pick out full constellations for reference. It was a reminder that even a spacecraft engineered down to the pound could be limited by something as basic as window size.
QWhat satellite did Schirra try and fail to spot from orbit?
On his fourth orbit, passing over East Africa, Schirra scanned the sky for Echo 1, a large reflective balloon satellite NASA had launched two years earlier as an early communications experiment. He never managed to pick it out against the sky. The attempt never made it into mission headlines, though it was part of testing the pilot's eyes and judgment as much as the capsule's machinery.
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1863government
Lincoln sets the last Thursday of November aside for thanksgiving and praise
Two and a half years into a war that had not spared a single state, Abraham Lincoln sat down in Washington to write something other than a battle order. On October 3, 1863, he issued Presidential Proclamation 106, inviting Americans everywhere, including those at sea and abroad, to observe the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise. The proclamation also asked the nation to pray for its widows, orphans, mourners, and all who suffered from the conflict. It was not the first American Thanksgiving, but it was the first to set a fixed national date.
Before 1863, Thanksgiving was a scattered, state-by-state custom. No president had fixed a single national date for it. Congress made that date law in 1870. The rhythm Lincoln set, giving thanks in late November, eventually became the fourth Thursday of November that Congress fixed in 1941, and that is the date Americans still observe today.
Did you know
QWho was Sarah Josepha Hale and why did Lincoln listen to her?
Hale was the editor of Godey's Lady's Book, one of the most widely read magazines in antebellum America, giving her a direct line to the country's middle-class readership. She spent years writing letters to sitting presidents pressing for a national Thanksgiving, framing it as a patriotic holiday that could unite Americans in purpose and values rather than just a harvest custom. Her campaign outlasted several administrations before Lincoln finally acted on it in 1863. Hale never held office and never ran for one, yet she reshaped the American calendar through persistence alone.
QDid the Pilgrims actually hold the first American thanksgiving?
Not by a long shot, and even the New England version is contested. The earliest documented civil day of thanksgiving in that tradition was declared at Plymouth Colony in 1623, three years after the Mayflower landed, not at the famous 1621 harvest feast most people picture. Some historians push the claim further back, pointing to earlier thanksgiving observances in colonial Virginia and in Spanish Florida, decades before Plymouth existed. The New England harvest-festival story was only one claim among several competing origin stories by the time Lincoln acted.
QDid Thanksgiving proclamations exist before the United States was even a country?
Yes. The Continental Congress itself issued national days of thanksgiving during the Revolutionary War, years before the Constitution existed, and the practice carried straight through into the new federal government. Presidents Washington and Adams both continued issuing their own thanksgiving proclamations once the Constitution took effect, treating it as an inherited wartime custom rather than a new invention. That means the idea of a president calling for a day of national gratitude was already roughly seventy-five years old by the time Lincoln sat down to write his 1863 version, a tradition Lincoln revived rather than invented.
1789government
Washington sets Thursday, November 26, as a day of thanksgiving
Five months into his presidency, George Washington was still defining the new government, one unwritten custom at a time. On October 3, 1789, he proclaimed Thursday, November 26, 1789, a day of public thanksgiving, asking Americans to acknowledge "the many signal favors of Almighty God." The idea was not new. Washington had called for a similar day in December 1777 after the victory at Saratoga, and the Continental Congress had done the same during the Revolution. What was new was doing it as President of the United States, under the Constitution, from the temporary capital in New York.
Washington's proclamation gave the presidency a power the Constitution never spelled out: the ability to declare a day of national observance. No law bound his successors to repeat it, and for decades most didn't follow a fixed schedule, but the precedent held. When Sarah Josepha Hale finally pushed Abraham Lincoln to make Thanksgiving an annual national holiday in 1863, she was asking him to make permanent what Washington had only done once, on his own authority.
Did you know
QDid every early president follow Washington's lead on Thanksgiving proclamations?
No. Thomas Jefferson refused to issue any, on principle. He believed a federal religious proclamation crossed the line separating church and state that he had spent his career defending, and he held to that position throughout both of his terms. John Adams and James Madison, by contrast, both issued their own national thanksgiving proclamations, but Jefferson's refusal in between meant the custom was not applied consistently across the early administrations. There was no unbroken chain from Washington to Lincoln, just a habit that different presidents picked up and set down as they saw fit over the next seventy years.
QWhat exact wording did Washington use to describe the reason for giving thanks?
Washington's proclamation asked Americans to acknowledge "the many signal favors of Almighty God," phrasing that framed the new nation's survival as providential rather than simply political. The language was deliberately broad and nonsectarian, fitting a government that included citizens of many denominations and no established church. It was also brief: Washington's proclamation ran a fraction of the length of the elaborate, multi-paragraph thanksgiving proclamations later presidents would issue.
QWhere was Washington physically governing from when he signed the proclamation?
New York City, which served as the nation's first capital under the Constitution before the government moved to Philadelphia in 1790 and finally to Washington, D.C., a decade later. Washington had been inaugurated there just five months earlier, on April 30, 1789, meaning his entire early presidency, including this proclamation, operated out of temporary quarters in a city that never served as the capital again. The building where he took his oath, Federal Hall, stood only blocks from where he likely signed the thanksgiving proclamation that October.
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Quote of the day
“Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.”
Steve Jobs
“Let us ever remember that our interest is in concord, not in conflict; and that our real eminence rests in the victories of peace, not those of war.”
William McKinley
“The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.”
