The Daily Dose/July 20, 2026
By Gaylon Kent – America’s Funniest Guy™
Leading Off
Notes from around the human experience.
“WE COPY YOU DOWN, EAGLE”: Regular readers of this crap know one of the items that we tend to mention every year – either here or in On This Date or, as likely as not, both places – is the Apollo 11 Moon landing.
“Houston…Tranquility Base Here…The Eagle Has Landed.”: Today is the 57th anniversary of Apollo 11’s landing on the Moon and mankind’s first steps on another celestial body. No matter what we humans accomplish over the centuries, the events of July 1969 will always stand as a landmark human achievement.
“That’s One Small Step…”: We’ve long thought this was our species’ finest hour, a line of demarcation separating everything that came before from everything that followed. The invention of gunpowder, the birth of Christ, and the Beatles also fit that description, as well as some others, perhaps, but the list of such days is very short.
“Apollo 11, Apollo 11…This Is Hornet, Hornet, Over.”: It was the culmination of a long national effort, one that began in 1961, when President John F. Kennedy called for Americans to land on the moon and return safely to Earth before “this decade is out”.
USA! USA! America could use a great national effort now. We don’t have one unless you consider partisan bickering a national effort, and we are so far removed from our national path that we haven’t done anything great since Apollo 17 left the Moon in 1972. We have been at war every day since 1989, and we’ve twice elected Donald Trump – an ignorant liar and a man of zero moral or intellectual substance – president.
More USA! USA!: We are a fractured and bickering mess, all of us circling our own individual wagons now, with citizens unable to take “no” for an answer or even handle an opposing viewpoint without escalation to DefCon 1. We no longer listen, we merely wait for a break in a conversation so we can issue our own opinions.
The Bottom Line: We are in our seventh decade of TV and fast food as focal points of American life, and we are paying the price. We are well entertained and well fed, and not much interested in anything that gets in the way of that. We are no longer willing – and perhaps unable – to do anything hard. This is our loss, because this country and this planet are better places when America is on a mission and has a point to make.
Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually.
The Diary of a Nobody – Sparrow turns down some KFC. Today’s Diary.
Now, after five or six hours, it’s reasonable to throw it out, but it’s not particularly edible after five or six hours, and we’ve already eaten besides…So a lot of food went to waste…
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On This Date
Extra, extra, read all about it.
Editor’s Note: Due to time constraints, these entries have run previously.
In 1969 – Human beings walk on another celestial body for the first time when Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the Moon for two-and-a-half hours while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit in the command module. Apollo 11 was the third mission to reach the moon; in May, Apollo 10 had done everything but land, and in December Apollo 8 orbited the moon. Armstrong and Aldrin spent two-and-a-half hours walking on the lunar surface and were the first of twelve humans to walk on somewhere other than Earth.
In 1984 – Uwe Hohn of East Germany establishes a new world record in the javelin at a meet in East Berlin. Hohn threw 343 feet, 9.75 inches to break the record of 327 feet, 1.92 inches set by American Tom Petranoff in 1983. Hohn’s record lasted until 1986 when track and field officials moved the javelin’s center of gravity forward four centimeters, and the current record is 323 feet, 1.1 inches, done by Jan Zelezny of the Czech Republic in 1996.
In 1959 – Johnny Horton is at #1 on Billboard’s country chart – then known as the Hot Country Sides chart – for the tenth and final consecutive week with The Battle of New Orleans. The song also went #1 pop in Australia and Canada, peaked at #16 in Great Britain, had earlier spent six weeks at #1 on the Hot 100, was Billboard’s #1 song of the year, and ranked 37th on Billboard’s 60th-anniversary Hot 100 in 2018. It was the first of two country #1 songs for Horton and remains his only pop #1.
Some Philosophy Crap
The wisdom of the ages. Whatever.
We choose to go to the moon in this decade, and do other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.
John F Kennedy
9/12/62
Answer To The Last Trivia Questions
Knowledge is power.
Rome was founded in 753 BC.
Today’s Stumper
Match wits with Gaylon. It’s not that hard.
Who was the last human to walk on the Moon? – Answer next time!
