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20091776 Club

Atlantis lifts off for Hubble's fifth and final servicing call

Seven astronauts, including John Grunsfeld on his third Hubble visit, carry two new instruments to an observatory NASA once considered too dangerous to save.

On May 11, 2009, at 2:01 pm EDT, Space Shuttle Atlantis lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on STS-125 — the fifth and final mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. The seven-member crew, including astronomer John Grunsfeld making his third Hubble visit, carried two new instruments and a full suite of replacement hardware to an observatory that NASA had once written off as too dangerous to save. Thirteen days later, Hubble emerged more capable than at any point since its 1990 launch…

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More from May 11
1858

Minnesota enters the Union as the 32nd state; the Dakota name, the French motto, the New England soul

Nine years after Ramsey stepped off a riverboat to govern 5,000 settlers, the eastern half of the old territory takes its place on the map.
1910

Taft signs Glacier into law; a million Montana acres become a national park

George Bird Grinnell, who first rode into the region in 1885 and spent two decades lobbying Congress, calls it "the Crown of the Continent."
1889

Gunmen behind a boulder hit Wham's paymaster convoy; eight Buffalo Soldiers wounded, $28,345 gone

A dozen riflemen firing from pre-built breastworks above an Arizona gorge stripped the Army payroll; Frankie Campbell's horse was still picking around the obstacle when the ambush opened.
19631776 Club
Two blasts hours after the truce agreement; 2,500 fill the streets, businesses burn, and Washington moves toward its first modern military deployment for domestic unrest.
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More from Modern America
1998

Thirteen Tomahawks hit a Khartoum medicine factory; Washington says it made nerve gas

The strike came thirteen days after the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, and the target was a plant that made most of Sudan's antibiotics.
2020

Biden accepts the nomination alone in a Delaware ballroom, no crowd, no roar

A pandemic convention ends with the nominee speaking to a camera instead of a stadium.
1994

Thirty-three years after his death, the Air Force finally makes Eugene Bullard an officer

France called him a hero and gave him a pilot's license in 1917; his own country waited until 1994 to make it official.
2012

Voyager 1 leaves the Sun's bubble; no craft has gone farther

Thirty-five years after launch, its instruments detect the plasma signature of true interstellar space.
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