19681776 Club
From orbit, astronauts go live: "From the Lovely Apollo Room high atop everything"
Three days into the first crewed Apollo flight, Schirra's crew beams the first live TV picture home from an American spacecraft.
The 21-month pause following the Apollo 1 fire that killed three astronauts on the launch pad gave way to Apollo 7's launch on October 11, 1968; three days later, on October 14, Walter Cunningham switched one on inside the Command Module and sent the first live television picture from an American spacecraft back to Earth. The broadcast opened with a hand-lettered card reading "From the Lovely Apollo Room high atop everything," a nod to the old band-leader introductions from 1930s radio. Commander Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele, and Cunningham mugged for the camera in zero gravity, and the stunt earned the crew a special Emmy…
