I don't know why this never occurred to me before, but the Chappaquiddick Incident happened roughly halfway through the journey of Apollo 11 to the moon, where two days later Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would be the first two humans to ever set foot upon it.
What is particularly ironic about all that is that it is Kennedy's late brother President John F. Kennedy who usually gets the credit for pushing the space program and setting as a goal the moon landing which would indeed take place within a decade of Kennedy's pronouncement to that effect.
And, although I don't put much stock in it, and in fact put it down to a problem with oxygen deprivation to the brain, Aldrin would later state that he saw a UFO sometime during the journey.
We may be going through the fortieth year anniversary of one of the pivotal times in mankind's history. Arguably mankind's ultimate achievement to date ran parallel to one of the darkest examples of the depths of human depravity to which a man could sink. Both of them without a doubt set the future course of American and world history. Three men at considerable risk to their lives achieved a dream millions had only imagined and billions never dared hope possible. One man displayed the ultimate craven contempt for his fellow man and so cost an innocent person her life and yet, in a brazen act of cowardly self-preservation, exhibited concern for nothing more than the protection of his political aspirations.
Ever since mankind rose out of the jungles and swamps and evolved to his current human form, he has tried to rise from the muck and the mud all the while being drawn and driven back towards it. In the meantime, during some point in time that counts as the morning on a strangely beautiful and faraway world, the earth will rise again, as always.
