Today’s almanac, Wednesday 17 April: fear over, Apollo 13 returns to Earth

It happened today

“Okay, Houston, we had a problem here.” So the Apollo 13 crew communicated to NASA headquarters that something had gone wrong. The spacecraft was more than 300 thousand kilometers from Earth and an explosion in the service module had knocked out the oxygen tanks. Suddenly the mission objective changed: no longer landing on the Moon, but bringing the astronauts home. It was the beginning of the most famous space “odyssey” in history – which in 1995 Ron Howard he dedicated the film of the same name, with Tom Hanks — followed with bated breath by the whole world. On April 17, 1970, the capsule returned to Earth with the three cosmonauts safe and sound. On April 17, ten years ago, NASA announced that the Kepler telescope had identified the first exoplanet, with a radius similar to that of the Earth, positioned in the habitable zone of a star. It was named Kepler-186 f: it orbits a red dwarf about 500 light years away from us. But understanding whether it is truly livable will not be easy.

Born of the day

Luigi Settembrini, 17 April 1813, writer and patriot

Thornton Wilder, 17 April 1813, playwright and writer

Karen Blixen, 17 April 1962, Danish writer

Benigno Zaccagnini, 17 April 1912, doctor and politician

William Holden, 17 April 1918, actor

Luciano Tajoli, 17 April 1920, singer and actor

Sergio Sollima, 17 April 1921, director, screenwriter and film critic

Carlo Di Palma, 17 April 1921, director of photography, director and screenwriter

Venantino Venantini, 17 April 1930, actor

Ira von Fürstenberg, 17 April 1940, nobleman, actress and designer

Nick Hornby, 17 April 1957, British writer, screenwriter and lyricist

Paola Perego, 17 April 1966, television presenter and entrepreneur

Jennifer Garner, April 17, 1972, American actress and film producer

Victoria Beckham, 17 April 1974, British businesswoman, stylist and singer

Raffaele Palladino, 17 April 1984, football coach and former footballer

Deaths of the day

Benjamin Franklin, April 17, 1790, American scientist and politician

Giovanni Malagodi, 17 April 1991, politician

Linda McCartney, April 17, 1998, photographer, keyboardist and singer

Oleg Cassini, 17 April 2006, stylist and costume designer

Aimé Césaire, 17 April 2008, French poet, writer and politician

Gabriel García Márquez, April 17, 2014, writer, journalist and essayist

Sergio Fantoni, 17 April 2020, actor, voice actor and theater director

Catherine Spaak, April 17, 2022, actress, singer and television presenter

Saint of the day

Saint Robert of La Chaise-Dieu, French Christian monk of the Benedictine order. Still very young, he was sent to the canons of the basilica of San Giuliano di Brioude, in Haute-Loire. According to the stories, here he kept many night vigils and prayers while during the day he took care of the poor and the sick, who suddenly healed just by being close to him. He then moved to the Benedictine abbey of Cluny, where he remained for about forty years. Together with some of his companions, Roberto built a hermitage which soon transformed into a monastery. Pope Leo IX soon after built the monastery into an abbey and, upon Robert’s death in 1067, it had around 300 monks.