1971: Nike Swoosh

via imprint
“June 1971 is the date the Nike Swoosh was launched. Designed by Carolyn Davidson for $35. The origin of the mark goes like this: Phil Knight, the co-founder of Blue Ribbon Sports (BRS) that evolved into Nike, wanted to differentiate BRS’s custom product from the ones they were importing from Onituska in Japan: ‘…so Knight turned to a graphic design student he met at Portland State University two years earlier.’ One day in 1969, the student, Carolyn Davidson, was approached by Knight and offered $2 per hour ‘to make charts and graphics’ for his business. For the next two years Davidson managed the design work on BRS. ‘Then one day Phil asked me if I wanted to work on a shoe stripe,’ Davidson recalled. The only advice she received was to ‘Make the stripe supportive of the shoe.’ Davidson came up with half a dozen options. None of the options ‘captivated anyone" so it came down to "which was the least awful...’ ”
Read the rest here.

The Mystery of the Missing Moon Trees

via wired
 
“15 years after NASA astronomer David Williams started searching for them, hundreds of trees grown from space-faring seeds are still missing. The moon trees, whose seeds circled the moon 34 times in Apollo 14 astronaut Stuart Roosa’s pocket, were welcomed back to Earth with great fanfare in 1971. One was planted in Washington Square in Philadelphia as part of the 1975 bicentennial celebrations. Another took root at the White House. Several found homes at state capitals and space-related sites around the country. Then-president Gerald Ford called the trees ‘living symbol[s] of our spectacular human and scientific achievements.’ And then, mysteriously, everyone seemed to forget about them.”

Read the rest here, visit his site here. Fascinating; a moon tree is less than an hour away in Hollidaysburg, PA.