Sixty-two years ago, Yuri Gagarin became the first person to go into orbit. Before getting into the Vostok 1 spacecraft, the Russian cosmonaut wrote a letter to his wife and daughters for them to read if he happened to perish during the mission. — Read the rest

Viral again this week is the casting wishlist for Star Trek: The Next Generation, which reveals that Denise Crosby was originally to be cast as Counselor Troi, not Lt. Tasha Yar, and Predator's Kevin Peter Hall was considered for both Lt. — Read the rest

Christopher Sadowski is, his lawyers submit, a most accomplished photographer of… Hitler admirer Heath Campbell? The New York-based shooter is threatening to sue the website Something Awful over a photo of the nazi spotted in its forums unless they pay $6750. — Read the rest

After he became a global phenomenon, George Michael considered retirement to get away from the demands of fame, telling the L.A. Times' Calendar magazine that he planned to reduce the strain of his celebrity status. One Frank Sinatra wrote in, exhorting him to continue cultivating his talent…

Shortly after George Orwell published Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1949, he received a letter from his onetime high school French teacher, Aldous Huxley, who had published Brave New Work 17 years earlier. Here are Huxley's comments, via Letters of Note:

Wrightwood.

After Gene Wilder saw early sketches of his costume for the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, he had some strong opinions to share with director Mel Stuart. From Letters of Note (via Dangerous Minds):

July 23rd

Dear Mel,

I've just received the costume sketches.

In 1907, Charles Morgan of Broome Station sent this telegram to Henry Prinsep, the Chief Protector of Aborigines for Western Australia, in Perth: "Send cask arsenic exterminate aborigines letter will follow."

Letters of Note (whose book was spectacular) publishes this arch, sarcastic letter from EB "Charlotte's Web" White to the ASPCA about whether his dachshund, Minnie, is duly licensed.

The famous Swiss surrealist leaves behind some of the twentieth century's most impressive and startling artwork. Here are our favorite biomechanical wonders.

As previously noted, the wonderful blog Letters of Note (mentioned here numerous times!) has spawned a book, called
Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience. The book is in stores today, featuring more than 125 letters, richly illustrated with facsimiles of the letters themselves. — Read the rest

The wonderful blog Letters of Note (mentioned here numerous times!) has spawned a book, called
Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience, to be published on May 6. The book will feature more than 125 letters, richly illustrated with facsimiles of the letters themselves. — Read the rest

Letters of Note has a 1952 letter from EB White to his editor, Ursula Nordstrom, occasioned by the impending Harper & Row publication of Charlotte's Web. Asked to explain why he wrote the book, he describes, beautifully, the circumstances of how he came to write it. — Read the rest

Shaun Usher (Letters of Note) found this amazing gem: Morrissey wrote this "epistle" to NME's editors on June 19, 1976 to complain about the Sex Pistol's lack of fashion sense. Beyond the yuks, there's a little punk history in there: The Sex Pistols were, to some extent, Malcom McLaren repackaging and co-opting NYC proto-punk acts like the New York Dolls and Iggy Pop.

This succinct note from Bill Baxley, Attorney General of Alabama in 1970, to the Grand Dragon of the KKK, is admirable in its brevity, forcefulness, and clarity. Letters of Note tells the story:

In 1970, shortly after being elected Attorney General of Alabama, 29-year-old Bill Baxley reopened the 16th Street Church bombing case — a racially motivated act of terrorism that resulted in the deaths of four African-American girls in 1963 and a fruitless investigation, and which marked a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement.

One of my favorite websites is Shaun Usher's Letters of Note, which runs interesting letters written by notable people. Today, Shaun posted a 1985 letter from Terry Gilliam to the head of Universal, Sid Sheinberg. Shaun says, "In August of 1985, many months after its successful release outside of North America, Terry Gilliam's iconic movie, Brazil, was still being cut for the U.S. — Read the rest

In 1973, Kurt Vonnegut learned that Charles McCarthy, head of the school board that governed Drake High School in North Dakota, had burned 32 copies of Slaughterhouse-Five in the school furnace, offended by the book's "obscene language." Vonnegut wrote a private letter to McCarthy, a heartfelt, low-key, scathing recrimination that could be repurposed for any literary censor. — Read the rest

Alduous Huxley sent George Orwell a fan-letter in Oct 1949, after receiving a review copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four from Orwell's publisher. Huxley (who, according to Letters of Note, was once Orwell's French teacher) is effusive in his praise, and goes on to directly compare Orwell's masterpiece with his own Brave New World. — Read the rest

From Letters of Note, this incredible letter written in 1855 by Lucy Thurston, a 60-year-old missionary in Hawaii who had breast cancer. She underwent a mastectomy (and lymph node removal) with no anesthesia, no blood transfusion.

She wrote the following letter to her daughter a month later and described the unimaginably harrowing experience.

Jourdon Anderson, an ex-slave, penned this letter to his former owner, Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee in 1865, after the Colonel wrote and asked him to return to service as a paid worker. The letter starts out seeming like a heartbreaking example of Stockholm Syndrome, as Jourdon Anderson recounts several wartime atrocities that the Colonel committed and expresses his gladness that the Colonel wasn't hanged for them. — Read the rest

Spacemen was a short-lived early-1960s magazine specifically about space-themed science fiction movies. Warren Publishing — creators of the classic magazines Famous Monster of Filmland, Monster World, Creepy, and Eerie — produced only 8 issues of the magazine, helmed by Forrest J. — Read the rest