Popular Culture
- In 2000, in the film Space Cowboys, the main characters Frank Corvin (Clint Eastwood), Hawk Hawkins (Tommy Lee Jones) and their team Daedalus of the U.S. Air Force are replaced by a chimpanzee named Mary-Ann for the new civilian organization (NASA) to take control of the new external atmosphere exploration program. The film mentions that the chimp became the first American to cross into outer space.
- A 2001 film titled Race to Space, was a fictionalized version of Ham's story about sending chimps to space. The chimpanzee in the movie was named Mac.
- In episode 12 of series 1 of The Ricky Gervais Show, Karl Pilkington tells his version of Ham's mission in his "Monkey News" segment. His version is entirely inaccurate.
- The 2006 song "Monkey 61" by Irish band Bell X1 was based on Ham the Chimp.
- In 2006, a documentary was made for Animal Planet called "Astrochimp #65" which tells the story of Ham as witnessed by Jeff. Jeff took care of Ham until his departure from the Air Force Base after the success of the mission.
- A 2008 animated film entitled Space Chimps was about sending chimps to space. The main character and hero of the movie was named Ham III, the grandson of Ham.
- In 2008, Bark Hide & Horn, a folk-rock band from Portland, Oregon, released a song titled, "Ham the Astrochimp," detailing the journey of Ham from his perspective.
- Curious George, the popular character from the children's books of the same name, undertakes a similar mission in the story Curious George Gets a Medal, published four years before Ham's flight.
- In the 1983 film adaption of The Right Stuff, the launch and splashdown of Ham's space flight is dramatized. The Mercury astronauts are asked by the traveling press corps which one thinks they will be first into space. After a montage showing the first successful launch and ocean recovery of a mission rocket, it is revealed that Ham the Chimp is the first "American" in space.
Read more about this topic: Ham The Chimp
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Popular culture entered my life as Shirley Temple, who was exactly my age and wrote a letter in the newspapers telling how her mother fixed spinach for her, with lots of butter.... I was impressed by Shirley Temple as a little girl my age who had power: she could write a piece for the newspapers and have it printed in her own handwriting.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“It is clear that in a monarchy, where he who commands the exceution of the laws generally thinks himself above them, there is less need of virtue than in a popular government, where the person entrusted with the execution of the laws is sensible of his being subject to their direction.”
—Charles Louis de Secondat Montesquieu (1689–1755)
“To assault the total culture totally is to be free to use all the fruits of mankind’s wisdom and experience without the rotten structure in which these glories are encased and encrusted.”
—Judith Malina (b. 1926)