Jacob "Kirby" Kurtzberg was an American comic book artist, writer and editor, widely regarded as one of the medium's major innovators and one of its most prolific and influential creators. He grew up in New York City and learned to draw cartoon figures by tracing characters from comic strips and editorial cartoons. He entered the nascent comics industry in the 1930s, drawing various comics features under different pen names, including Jack Curtiss, before ultimately settling on Jack Kirby. In 1940, he and writer-editor Joe Simon created the highly successful superhero character Captain America for Timely Comics, predecessor of Marvel Comics. During the 1940s, Kirby regularly teamed with Simon, creating numerous characters for that company and for National Comics Publications, later to become DC Comics.

After serving in the European Theater in World War II, Kirby produced work for DC Comics, Harvey Comics, Hillman Periodicals and other publishers. At Crestwood Publications, he and Simon created the genre of romance comics and later founded their own short-lived comic company, Mainline Publications.

James Harold Doolittle was an American military general and aviation pioneer. He made early coast-to-coast flights, won many flying races, and helped develop instrument flying.

Doolittle studied as an undergraduate at University of California, Berkeley, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1922 and earning a doctorate in aeronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1925. He was a flying instructor during World War I and a Reserve officer in the United States Army Air Corps, but he was recalled to active duty during World War II. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for personal valor and leadership as commander of the Doolittle Raid, a bold long-range retaliatory air raid on some of the Japanese main islands on April 18, 1942, four months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The attack was a major morale booster for the United States and Doolittle was celebrated as a hero.

Doolittle was promoted to lieutenant general and commanded the Twelfth Air Force over North America, the Fifteenth Air Force over the Mediterranean, and the Eighth Air Force over Europe.

The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the third United States human spaceflight program carried out by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which succeeded in landing the first men on the Moon from 1969 to 1972. It was first conceived during Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration as a three-person spacecraft to follow the one-person Project Mercury, which put the first Americans in space. Apollo was later dedicated to President John F. Kennedy's national goal of "landing a man on the Moon by the end of this decade and returning him safely to the Earth" in an address to Congress on May 25, 1961. It was the third US human spaceflight program to fly, preceded by the two-person Project Gemini conceived in 1961 to extend spaceflight capability in support of Apollo.

Kennedy's goal was accomplished on the Apollo 11 mission when astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed their Apollo Lunar Module on July 20, 1969, and walked on the lunar surface, while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit in the command and service module, and all three landed safely on Earth on July 24.