up by the Sunday Times to aid Crowhurst's widow and four children. At 8:00 p.m., the countdown began at five days, 13 hours and 32 minutes for the 9:32 a.m. launch on July 16 of the Apollo 11 mission. The first parade for Vietnam War veterans took place, with the men of the 3rd Battalion, 60th Brigade of the 9th Infantry Division of the United States Army marching through Seattle to the cheers of supporters and the booing of demonstrators from the Seattle Anti-War Action Movement. Born: Jonas Kaufmann, German operatic tenor; in Munich Rami Makhlouf, Syrian business magnate; in Damascus July 11, 1969 (Friday) David Bowie's song "Space Oddity" (about a fictional astronaut, "Major Tom"), was released by Philips Records in conjunction with the expected launch of the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon. The song had been recorded three weeks earlier. The Sprague Electric Company delivered a diameter silicon disc to NASA, containing 73 "messages of good will from the leaders of the world's nations to be flown and left on the Moon," that had been inscribed microscopically. The medallion was placed on a package adhered to one of the sleeves of Buzz Aldrin's spacesuit, and was almost forgotten until Aldrin was climbing back into the lunar module before for departure on July 21. Neil Armstrong reminded Aldrin of "that package" and Aldrin tossed it on to the lunar surface. Born: David Tao (Tao Xuzhong), Taiwanese R&B singer and songwriter; in Hong Kong July 12, 1969 (Saturday) Nearly four months after its cancellation by the American NBC TV network, Star Trek was introduced to British television viewers. Its run on BBC-1 began with the pilot episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before" (unlike the original US run, which had opted for "The Man Trap"). Filling in as a summer replacement for Doctor Who between the Doctor's sixth and seventh seasons, the programme was shown in the Doctor Who 5:15 p.m. time slot between afternoon sports and the 10-minute BBC news and weather update. July 13, 1969 (Sunday) The Soviet Union launched the unmanned lunar spacecraft Luna 15, three days before the scheduled liftoff of the American Apollo 11 manned mission to the Moon, with the objective of performing a sample-return mission and bringing back the first lunar soil (a "Moon rock") ahead of the United States. Course corrections were done to place Luna 15 into lunar orbit at