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© 2021 All Rights Reserved. Don’t distribute or repurpose this work with out written permission from the copyright holder(s).
Printed from https://www.damninteresting.com/curio/pushing-the-envelope/
As is usually the case with folks in harmful professions, the Apollo astronauts discovered that life insurance coverage insurance policies have been prohibitively costly. Quite than pay the exorbitant insurance coverage charges, the astronauts devised a system to make sure their wives and kids can be financially taken care of within the not-altogether-unlikely occasion of catastrophe.
Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins autographs have been extremely prized by area fans, so within the months main as much as the launch of Apollo 11, the crew spent a lot of their spare time autographing postage envelopes that have been imprinted with Apollo photographs. The crew took 214 of those envelopes with them within the capsule. They entrusted the remainder with an Earth-bound good friend, who visited a Texas submit workplace on launch day (16 July 1969) and once more on the day Apollo 11 landed (20 July 1969) to affix a six-cent postage stamp and have them postmarked with the historic date.
The envelopes have been distributed among the many astronauts’ households, with directions to promote them if the crew was unable to return. These would come to be referred to as the “insurance coverage covers,” and the technique was reused for subsequent Apollo missions.
A lot of the covers have been ultimately given as presents to household, pals, and associates. They’ll sometimes be discovered at area memorabilia auctions promoting for wherever from $20,000 to $50,000.
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