To commemorate the launch (not landing) of the Луна 2 aka the Second Soviet Cosmic Rocket on September 12, 1959, we present The Moon.

 

According to Wikipedia, Luna 2 was the first spacecraft to touch the surface of the Moon, and the first human-made object to make contact with another celestial body. Well, Enrico Novelli went there first…

“Mars Daughter, You are fine. I am loving you and I should like very much to marry you.”

– Aldovin, Terrestrial Astronomer (Aldovin's radiotelegraph to Mars), via

…and what an adventure he had! An Earth gentleman points his telescope at the red planet, only to spot a beautiful Martian princess. He promptly falls in love and lo and behold! it's mutual! That asks for an instantaneous wedding halfway, on the Moon, and nothing can stop them!

A seafaring explorer in commemoration of Ferdinand Magellan's (almost) completed circumnavigation in 1522. The Portuguese Magellan was enlisted by Spain to gain access to the Moluccas' spices and other trading goods by sailing west instead of east, thus avoiding the heavily armed Portuguese and Dutch traders who were plundering Southeast Asia, its peoples and cultures.

“Calypso the lustrous goddess tried to hold me back, deep in her arching caverns, craving me for a husband. So did Circe, holding me just as warmly in her halls, the bewitching queen of Aeaea keen to have me too. But they never won the heart inside me, never. So nothing is as sweet as a man's own country.”

– Homer, Odyssey, ca. 8^th century CE (via)

 

With the war over, Odysseus returns home by sea, a ten year voyage known as the Odyssey

Celebrating International Talk like a Pirate Day*: a [favourite] pirate film.

 

* International Talk like a Pirate Day takes place on September 19.

A character who is always on the GO [sic] for World Productivity Day

“I am the great traitor. There must be no other. Anyone who even thinks about deserting this mission will be cut up into 198 pieces. Those pieces will be stamped on until what is left can be used only to paint walls. Whoever takes one grain of corn or one drop of water… more than his ration, will be locked up for 155 years. If I, Aguirre, want the birds to drop dead from the trees… then the birds will drop dead from the trees. I am the wrath of God. The earth I pass will see me and tremble. But whoever follows me and the river, will win untold riches. But whoever deserts…””

– Don Lope de Aguirre

Conquistador Don Lope de Aguirre drives his men deep into the Peruvian jungle, to El Dorado

“A thousand men, say, go searchin' for gold. After six months, one of them's lucky: one out of a thousand. His find represents not only his own labor, but that of nine hundred and ninety-nine others to boot. That's six thousand months, five hundred years, scramblin' over a mountain, goin' hungry and thirsty. An ounce of gold, mister, is worth what it is because of the human labor that went into the findin' and the gettin' of it.”

– Howard

“Right now, I don't know if it's me or the dynamite that doin' all that sweatin'.”

– Jake Sharp

A voyage of discovery on the start of Francis Drake's circumnavigation. Children, ignored by their ever-busy parents, set sail to the Seventh Continent.

Someone protects a woman on White Ribbon Day

 

Leave it to popular media to create a fashion for helplessness. In the 110 years that have passed since William Randolph Hearst's titular heroine fought her way to #emancipation in The Perils of Pauline (1914), “the damsel in distress” is still very much the go-to trope for movie writers. Sadly, instead of debunking the belief that women need to be protected by men from men, it's now embraced by third wave feminism. Just yesterday – November 25, 2023 – I saw a call to arms from a leftwing feminist group to “protect girls” from the primal evil that is manhood. Oh how we did better once.

“I don't know what to do with her Highness. Say right and she'll go left, say left and she'll go right. And though she is a girl, she has never shown me a tear.”

– old lady-in-waiting

In Kurosawa's 隠し砦の三悪人, a couple of greedy peasants escort a man and woman across enemy lines after the man has promised them a share of the gold they're carrying. Unknowingly, the fools not only protect their bounty, but a general and princess trying to escape an enemy clan so they can rebuild their kingdom. And also unbeknownst to the tricksters, Makabe and Yuki are not as helpless as they may seem.

One day, a large blimp shows up over a small Bulgarian village. The townspeople, seeing the prosperity in all that beautiful silk and then some, go after it.

“It was fear that created the first gods.”

– Stratius