It's hard to believe but today marks the 50th anniversary of the launch of the first chimp into space, a short flight that set the tone for the entire 1960's race into orbit and to the moon.  Only a few months later the Russians would go ahead and launch a human being into the great unknown in a barely controlled metal shell, so at the time nobody thought twice about strapping in an unknowing chimp and lighting the fuse. Actually, NASA called him #65 and only named him after landing to depersonalize the whole thing in case it went south on them.  But while plenty of other animals had been sacrificed in space, or made it back as a passenger in better or worse shape, Ham actually had a simple task or two to test his reactions. He enjoyed some fame and a lived for a couple of decades after his flight, and is buried outside a space museum in New Mexico.  Officially his bones were cleaned by carpet beetles and and saved for research purposes at the Smithsonian, so what parts of him are actually buried there is hard to say.

Today, of course, we could follow the whole flight on our phones or 25 different news channels, but back in the day you had to wait for Life Magazine to hit the stands to see the whole story.  They've just put up a story with famous and unpublished pictures of little #65, the first real astronaut, Ham the chimpanzee.