On This Day In History - 22nd May

[Waks]

1969: Apollo 10 gets bird's eye view of Moon
Two US astronauts aboard Apollo 10 are on their way back to the safety of their mother ship after their lunar module came to within eight nautical miles (14kms) of the Moon's surface. Colonel Thomas Stafford and Commander Eugene Cernan were carrying out a rehearsal for a planned Moon landing this summer.
They were in the lunar module (LM) nicknamed Snoopy and are now about to rejoin the command module (aka Charlie Brown) piloted by Commander John Young 50 miles (80km) above the Moon.
The two spacemen came closer than any human being has come to a celestial body.
"Snoopy" made two passes over the planned landing site for Apollo 11 before making a successful rendez-vous with "Charlie Brown".
After the first sweep at six times the speed of sound, Col Stafford said they had taken so many photographs he feared the camera had jammed while trying to change the film.


1981: Yorkshire Ripper jailed for life
Peter Sutcliffe, known as the Yorkshire Ripper, has been sentenced to life imprisonment at the Old Bailey.
The judge, Mr Justice Boreham, imposed a sentence of 30 years. He described Sutcliffe, a lorry driver from Bradford, as "an unusually dangerous man" and recommended he serve his full term. The jury returned a majority verdict on 13 counts of murder and seven counts of attempted murder between 1976 and 1981.
Most of the victims were prostitutes who were beaten about the head and their bodies mutilated. Yorkshire Police spent nearly six years trying to track down the killer and by the end of the investigation, the incident room in Leeds was crammed full of facts and information relating to the case.