Monday, November 28, 2011

Cape Canaveral or Cape Kennedy?

When I was a kid in the late 1970s and early 1980s, NASA regularly received a lot of media attention because the Space Shuttle program was just beginning.  And in those years I often wondered why I heard the NASA launch facility in Florida referred to as "Cape Canaveral" sometimes, and at other times as "Cape Kennedy."

Well, today I learned why for the first time. On this date in 1963, in the wake of the assassination of President Kennedy, President Lyndon Johnson announced that Cape Canaveral would be renamed 'Cape Kennedy' in his honor. But then in 1973, the name was changed back by a vote of the residents.

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