Astronaut Sally Ride: Rest in Peace

Sally Ride, the first American woman to fly in space, died on July 23, 2012 after a 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer, her company said. She was 61.

"Sally lived her life to the fullest, with boundless energy, curiosity, intelligence, passion, commitment and love. Her integrity was absolute; her spirit was immeasurable; her approach to life was fearless," read a statement on the website of Sally Ride Science, a company she started to help teach students -- particularly young women and girls -- about science, math and technology.

In the obituary for Ride, female partner of 27 years, Tam O'Shaughnessy, is listed first as a survivor. Then the obituary mentions her mother and other family members. Ride had been married to a fellow astronaut for five years, from 1982 to 1987. The news about O'Shaughnessy surprised those not in Ride's inner circle and sparked a national debate about the intensely complex and private issue of coming out and throwing your name behind gay causes.

"Could she have helped the cause? Maybe," says Fred Sainz, vice president of communications for the Human Rights Campaign, an advocacy group for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. "For her not to have shared an incredibly important aspect of her life — being in a committed long-term relationship with a woman — meant many Americans did not get to see a dimension of her life that would have helped them understand us (gay people) and our contributions to society."

Her contributions can still be appreciated in a new context now, according to Ride's sister, Bear Ride, a lesbian who has supported gay rights causes.

"She was just a very private person who wanted to do things her way," Bear Ride told the Associated Press in an e-mail. "She didn't like labels (including hero)."

 

"At the end of the day, I gained an incredible respect for Sally Ride for knowing who she was and that she was true to herself and her family," says Sainz in an article for USA Today. "Clearly, it was not important to her that she live someone else's sense of who she should be. I think that's how we should all live our lives."

The Virgin Queen: Warrior, Woman, Queen

Hollywood created many films about Queen Elizabeth I. Recently, The Movie Channel presented a number of these biopics spanning from 1939 to the present. Take a look at a brief assortment:

The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)

Matronly Elizabeth I loves Robert Deveraux, 2nd Earl of Essex, but politics come before the relationship. Better Davis stars, along with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland.

Unification Church founder Rev. Sun Myung Moon dies at 92

 

 

The Rev. Sun Myung Moon was a self-proclaimed messiah who built a global business empire. He called both North Korean leaders and American presidents his friends, but spent time in prisons in both countries. His followers around the world cherished him, while his detractors accused him of brainwashing recruits and extracting money from worshippers.

These contradictions did nothing to stop the founder of the Unification Church from turning his religious vision into a worldwide movement and a multibillion-dollar corporation stretching from the Korean Peninsula to the United States.

Moon died Monday at a church-owned hospital near his home in Gapyeong County, northeast of Seoul, two weeks after being hospitalized with pneumonia, Unification Church spokesman Ahn Ho-yeul told The Associated Press. Moon’s wife and children were at his side, Ahn said. He was 92.

Moon founded his Bible-based religion in Seoul in 1954, a year after the Korean War ended, saying Jesus Christ personally called on him to complete his work.

The church gained fame — and notoriety — by marrying thousands of followers in mass ceremonies presided over by Moon himself. The couples often came from different countries and had never met, but were matched up by Moon in a bid to build a multicultural religious world.

 

 

A 1982 wedding at New York’s Madison Square Garden — the first outside South Korea — drew thousands of participants.

“International and intercultural marriages are the quickest way to bring about an ideal world of peace,” Moon said in a 2009 autobiography. “People should marry across national and cultural boundaries with people from countries they consider to be their enemies so that the world of peace can come that much more quickly.”

Today, the Unification Church has 3 million followers, including 100,000 members in the U.S., and has sent missionaries to 194 countries, Ahn said. But ex-members and critics say the figure is actually no more than 100,000 members worldwide.

 

 

Moon sought and eventually developed a good relationship with conservative American leaders such as former Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Yet he also served 13 months at a U.S. federal prison in the mid-1980s after a New York City jury convicted him of filing false tax returns. The church says the U.S. government persecuted Moon because of his growing influence and popularity with young Americans.

In later years, the church adopted a lower profile in the United States and focused on building up its businesses. Moon lived for more than 30 years in the United States, the church said.

As he grew older, Moon also handed over day-to-day control of his empire to his children. His U.S.-born youngest son, the Rev. Hyung-jin Moon, was named the church’s top religious director in April 2008. Other children run the church’s businesses and charitable activities in South Korea and abroad.