Thomas P. Stafford

And then we, then the American spacecraft and the R- and the Soviet spacecraft rendezvoused and, and docked in orbit.

And, uh, Tom Stafford and, was the commander of that flight, and, um, let's see, uh...

Yeah, so he opened the hatch and, and shook hands with his Soviet counterparts, and there was a famous picture of them shaking hands through the hatchway, which is, uh, a little bit funny because, uh, the Russians, Russian superstition is you never shake hands over a threshold.

You know, that's supposedly, supposed to be bad luck.

Gemini 9 saw Gene Cernan almost died in a spacewalk when he became overheated, his visor became fogged, and he encountered a sharp shard of metal at the aft end of the spacecraft that could have torn his suit open.

Before the mission took off, Deke Slayton, who was the head of the astronaut office, instructed Tom Stafford, who was the commander of the mission, That if Cernan became marooned, Stafford was instructed not to stay in space and perish along with his co-pilot.

He was instead to cut him loose, something that almost happened.

I think conventional wisdom suggests that when Apollo 11 landed on the moon, that that was when America won the space race with the Soviet Union.

Here's one.

It's a picture of one that was given to Thomas Stafford.

So, okay.

Yeah, I mean, I guess it's been around a while.

Although it has no specific connection to Christmas, it did become associated with Christmas music in the 1860s.

In a Christmas-themed prank by Gemini 6 astronauts Tom Stafford and Wally Schirra on December 16, 1965, they played the song Back to Earth.

A Trivial Pursuit question claims that the horse's name in the song is Bobtail.

We found the original lyrics and also referenced mentalfloss.com.

But before that, we have to talk about Apollo 10 for a bit.

Launched on May the 18th, 1969, its crew included Eugene Cernan, John Young, and Thomas Stafford.

Their mission consisted of doing every single aspect involved in a lunar landing except for actually landing on the moon.

It was a final dry run before Apollo 11 launched just a couple of months later.

Yep, well, it sounds like I'm in the same camp as most astronauts, which I think is a good camp to be in.

The fact is that throughout the entire history of space exploration, there has been only one definitive UFO sighting reported by astronauts.

On December the 6th, 1965, 10 days before Christmas, Wally Schirra and Thomas Stafford were aboard Gemini 6 and were getting ready to reenter Earth's atmosphere when Stafford contacted Mission Control to report seeing a familiar-looking UFO.

He said, "We have an object, looks like a satellite, going from north to south, probably in polar orbit.

As a matter of course, the chief sufferers in Henry's cause were reinstated in their property, often with large additions.

Such were his mother, the Lady Margaret, now Countess of Derby, Sir Thomas Stafford, the son and heir of the late Duke of Buckingham, Catherine, Duchess of Bedford, the same Duke's widow, and Piers Courtney, Bishop of Exeter, who like his brother Sir Edward, had been with Henry in exile.

To John, Earl of Oxford, whose father had lost his life in the Lancastrian struggle and who had distinguished himself in 1473 by the seizure of St. Michael's Mount, was given the office of Admiral of England, Ireland, and Aquitaine.

With this grant were joined many others, among which we should not have expected to find Lord Oxford's appointment as keeper of the lions, lionesses, and leopards in the Tower, with a shilling a day for himself and sixpence for the food of each animal.

With this request he complied as we have already seen, yet her coronation was not for the present allowed.

Considering himself now fairly established on the throne, Henry resolved on a progress to the north, the great home of the Yorkist party, whence Richard III had recently drawn his best and most faithful troops.

On the way thither he kept his Easter joyously at Lincoln, but was rudely disabused of his confidence in his own fortune by an insurrection raised by Lord Lovell, Sir Humphrey Stafford, and Sir Thomas Stafford, who had been in sanctuary at Colchester since Bosworth Field.

The Staffords were sons of the Humphrey Stafford slain by Cade in 1450, and like Lord Lovell had fought for Richard at Bosworth.

Who have we got?

Well, yeah, I have to give a shout-out to Irish football reporter Tom Stafford.

He has a Route One column for extratime.com. He's done brilliant previews for all the clubs involved.

Um, some of these clubs are pretty unfamiliar names to people, especially who aren't Irish.