December 2025

Editor’s Note: Douglas Brinkley, a distinguished professor of history at Rice University and Contributing Editor of American Heritage, has written more than 20 books including American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race, in which portions of this essay appear. The book looks at how Kennedy envisioned the space program, his inspiring challenge to the nation, and America’s race to the moon..

Even the White House ushers were abuzz on the morning of October 10, 1963, because President John F. Kennedy was honoring the Mercury Seven astronauts in a Rose Garden affair.

Kennedy wanted to personally congratulate the “Magnificent Seven” astronauts, all household names, for their intrepid service to the country. His remarks would the end of the Mercury projects after six successful space missions.

See our slideshow for more photographs of the current reenactment of the Knox expedition.

Two hundred and fifty years ago this month, a 26-year-old bookseller from Boston led a team of patriots that hauled 56 cannon and barrels of lead and flints 300 miles through the wilderness from Fort Ticonderoga in northern New York to the American forces besieging Boston. Henry Knox and his men accomplished that feat in the middle of winter, hauling 60 tons of supplies on ox carts and sleds up and down the Berkshire mountains in snowstorms and bitter cold. 

Editor’s Note: Michael Auslin is a Distinguished Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and author of National Treasure: How the Declaration of Independence Made America, which will be published this May by Simon & Schuster.