It’s 1968, and you’re curled up in front of the TV, watching grainy footage of astronauts drift across the screen. Then, somewhere between the evening news and a commercial, a voice tells you: you can reserve a seat on the first passenger flight to the moon. Nope, not a daydream, but an actual reservation with an actual airline. All you had to do was call Pan Am. Was the Pan Am First Flights Moon Club just an elaborate marketing stunt? Photo credit: Rawpixel For three remarkable years, that’s exactly what tens of thousands of people did. The Pan Am First Moon Flights Club (presented by Pan American World Airways) invited ordinary people to put their names on a list for a trip beyond Earth, and it became one of the most charming, audacious marketing campaigns in aviation history. It started with one persistent dreamer In 1964, an Austrian journalist named Gerhard Pistor walked into a Vienna travel agency and asked for a one-way ticket no one had ever sold: a flight to the moon. The clerk, baffled, had no idea what to do. The request was passed along to management, then to a supervisor, then another supervisor, until it landed on the desk of an airline that would actually say yes. Eventually, it ended up at Pan Am. Pan Am’s leadership saw something in the quirky request. Its publicity-savvy founder, Juan Trippe, knew an opportunity when he saw one. How one oddball request became a national campaign For a while, Pistor’s booking just sat there as a curiosity. Pan Am held onto the reservation, but there was no club, no cards, no campaign—just a single name on file, and the airline’s promise that the first flight would leave around 2000. Then the culture caught up with the idea. In 1968, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey hit theaters, and audiences watched a sleek Pan Am “Orion III” glide toward an orbiting space station. The airline’s logo on the big screen made the whole “moon travel” idea feel less like a gag and more like a preview. That same year, Pan Am decided to turn its random reservation list into something real: the First Moon Flights Club. Book the moon This is where Pan Am’s marketing department went to work. Joining the First Moon Flights Club was free—no deposit, no catch. You’d call Pan Am, give your name, and, just like that, boom: you were in line for the moon. In return, the airline mailed you an official membership card, numbered to show exactly where you stood in the queue. Suddenly, the dream wasn’t abstract anymore. It was a card in your wallet, the kind of thing you’d pull out to show your friends. Pan Am promoted the club just the way it promoted its glamorous earthbound routes: by leaning on its reputation as the most prestigious name in the sky, back in travel’s so-called Golden Age. There was a playfulness to it. The fare, the airline said, was “not fully resolved, and may be out of this world,” a wink at both the cost and the destination. Pan Am, in flight. Photo credit: Flickr Was it partly a publicity stunt? Sure. Aviation reporters and plenty of skeptics said so at the time. Did Pan Am actually start calculating ways to reach the moon and take its customers along for the ride? No, but the hype machine worked anyway. The First Moon Flights Club tapped into something people genuinely believed was coming.  “Commercial flights to the moon are going to happen,” declared Pan Am spokesperson James A. Arey in 1985. “They might not happen next year, they might not happen in five years – but they will happen.” Why people actually signed up  The momentum built in waves. Apollo 8 looped around the moon in late 1968, followed by Apollo 11’s landing in July 1969, and suddenly, a sci-fi idea felt close enough to touch. NASA announced it was preparing to take civilian “citizen observers” aboard space shuttles for $100,000 each as part of its Space Flight Participation Program.  Space flight was all the rage. Photo credit: Getarchive Every milestone sent a fresh surge of sign-ups to Pan Am. One person was so eager to sign up that he sent along a check for $1 million. By the time the club stopped taking names in 1971, more than 93,000 people from some 90 countries had put their names on the list. “[The moon] seemed like a heck of a place to go to where no tourist has been,” William J. Kelly, a retired Air Force colonel, told the Los Angeles Times in 1985. “If they beat the undertaker to the front door, I’ll make it.” And these weren’t all anonymous hopefuls. The roster reportedly included future President Ronald Reagan, beloved broadcaster Walter Cronkite (card #90,002), and Senator Barry Goldwater. Everyone, it seemed, wanted a seat on the future. So, did anyone make it to the moon?  You already know the answer. No commercial Pan Am flight ever left for the moon. Over the decades that followed, rising costs and an industry in upheaval slowly wore the airline down, and in 1991 Pan Am declared bankruptcy. The company was nine years shy of the 2000 launch date it once floated. But the cards became keepsakes, and the people who held onto them never quite let go of the dream. The back of Jeff Gates’ Pan Am First Moon Flights Club card. Photo credit: National Air and Space Museum Consider Jeff Gates. The day after Apollo 11 landed in July 1969, he called up Pan Am to book his reservation to the moon, for two. The process was loose enough that nobody blinked. At the time, Gates was only 20 and not yet married. So when the agent asked for his wife’s name, and he didn’t have one to give, he told her to simply put down “Mrs. Gates.” He figured he’d have the details sorted by the time the flight left the ground. Decades later, Gates donated his First Moon Flights Club card to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. There it sits today: one small paper card, standing in for a very big dream. The dream lives on  Look around today. Companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic are selling the very same dream Pan Am was selling more than 50 years ago: tickets to space for ordinary people, not astronauts.  Pan Am didn’t get the timeline right. It arrived at the moon-landing party a couple of decades too early. But it understood something true about us, and 93,000 people proved it: The urge to chase the stars is about as human as it gets. Half a century later, we’re still standing in line. The post Pan Am vowed to fly you to the moon by the year 2000. Here’s what actually happened. appeared first on Upworthy.

Hug or handshake? The problem is that when you run into someone, you usually don’t have a lot of time to make the decision. Giving a handshake when someone wants a hug makes you look cold. To go in for a bear hug when someone wants to shake hands makes you seem overzealous.  This can especially be a problem in work situations. In some industries, a hug is a genuine way to show affection for a coworker, whereas in others, it’s extremely inappropriate. The greeting conundrum also changes depending on which coast you live on. People in Los Angeles are a lot huggier than those in New York City. When to give a hug or a handshake? Blanca Cobb, a body language and human behavior expert in Greensboro, N.C., says that instead of being mind readers, we choose the right greeting ourselves. It’s best to telegraph what you plan to do at the appropriate distance and allow the person you’re greeting to follow along. A woman giving a hug. Credit: Canva “The easiest thing to do is to control your own cues,” Cobb told TIME. “You don’t have to worry about milliseconds and microseconds and whether you’re reading this person right.” The key is to make it clear enough so that the other person knows what to do.  Four steps is the perfect distance to open your arms or extend your hand When it comes to distance, you should put your hand out for a handshake or begin extending your arms for a hug within four to five steps of the person you are greeting. If you send the signal too early, you’ll make them feel awkward. You’ll look like a bird walking seven steps to someone with your arms out or a robot marching eight steps up to them with your hand extended. Make it clear that you want a handshake or a hug “What I say to people is I actually don’t want you to match them, in terms of the greeting,” communication expert Vanessa Van Edwards said in a LinkedIn post. “It’s better to be the assertive one and show them the kind of greeting you want.” She adds that if you want a handshake, to show it with absolute clarity. “Stick your hand straight out, palm vertical, and slightly blade your body. That body angle + hand position is the universal ‘I’m coming in for a handshake,'” she continues. If you want a hug, be sure to approach them with both palms visible because people instinctively read open palms as warm and welcoming.  A woman shaking hands. Credit: Canva Suppose you and the person you are greeting have a body language breakdown and end up giving each other a weird half-shake, one-arm hug that makes everyone feel awkward. It’s okay; the best thing you can do is call it out. A psychological phenomenon known as the Pratfall Effect says that if you are already seen as a competent person, calling out your mistake will make you even more likable.  After the failed hug, you should call it out and move on: “I guess we botched the choreography. How are you?” “That was awkward. What have you been up to recently?” “Well, that’s a new way to say ‘hello’? How’s the party going?” Ultimately, if you’re going in to greet someone and you aren’t sure if it’s a hug or a handshake, it probably means that you have a friendly relationship with that person. They don’t want to embarrass you, so by making it clear how you’d like to engage, nine times out of ten they will go with your choice. Just remember: they’re probably just as uncomfortable as you are and want to get the formalities out of the way so you can enjoy each other’s company. The post The ‘four-step’ method to solve the awkward hug or handshake greeting confusion appeared first on Upworthy.

Working as an airplane refueler is a physically and mentally demanding job. It involves handling highly flammable, hazardous fluids, adhering to countless policies, procedures, and regulations, and working on a loud, busy airplane tarmac, rain or shine. That’s why, after two decades on the job refueling planes at John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California, U.S. Navy veteran James Blair had developed a debilitating limp. Blair’s hard work on the tarmac, even though he was in obvious pain, caught the attention of Lacinda Thackeray from Salt Lake City, Utah, who took a video of him from her plane window and uploaded it to TikTok. “Does anyone know this man at the John Wayne Airport?” she asked her followers. “Watching him work so hard, he can barely move, truly broke my heart. I know there has to be a way we can help him retire.”  @boymom692 Does anyone know this man at the John Wayne Airport? Watching him work so hard, he could barely move, barely walk truly broke my heart. I know there has to be a way we can help him retire. #findhim #viral #delta #retirement #empath ♬ original sound – Keegan Thackeray’s TikTok post received over 7 million views The post went viral, garnering over seven million views and inspiring Thackeray to launch a GoFundMe campaign to help him retire. “I was sitting at John Wayne Airport, just waiting like everyone else, when I noticed a man outside on the tarmac. At first, nothing seemed unusual—just another worker doing his job,” Thackeray wrote on the GoFundMe page. “But then I really watched. He could barely walk. Every step looked painful. He moved slowly, carefully, like his body was working against him. And yet, he kept going and lifting equipment and moving the airplane stairs. Fueling planes. Doing physically demanding work that most people half his age would struggle with. And he didn’t stop. There was no complaint, no hesitation—just quiet determination. It broke me.” @jimblair3 I am the guy from the video by @LaCinda fyp viral getthisonthefyp xyzbca donation ♬ original sound – James Blair A month after the GoFundMe page was created, it raised nearly $175,000 of its $200,000 goal. Over 5,000 people sent in donations and, for Blair, it was cathartic. “When I first saw the video, and I saw the money coming up, I started laughing, because I’ve been doing this job for 20 years and I just didn’t think anybody actually cared,” Blair told CBS News. The GoFundMe campaign came when Blair was at his breaking point Even though he was in chronic pain, he had to keep working to care for his 90-year-old mother undergoing hospice care. “My mom fell … I’m going to cry. My mom fell in September, and she was taken to the hospital,” Blair said. For Blair, the donations couldn’t have come at a better time. “It almost got to a point, I want to say, like a month ago, where I was going to have to quit work to take care of her,” Blair told NBC News. In addition to helping pay for his mother’s care, Blair hopes to use the money to have knee surgery. “When you go up and down on your knees three, four times a flight, after a while the knees just start giving out,” he told NBC News. “I’m in pain all the time. Walking downstairs, walking on ladders.” For years, Blair worked through pain in front of countless passengers who took off and landed on the busy tarmac at John Wayne Airport. Thackeray changed his life because she decided that something had to be done. “His co-worker said to me, you know, how many people have passed that window and seen what you’ve seen, but you’re the only one who took the action and helped him that day,” Thackeray said. Blair’s story is a wonderful example of what can happen when people take empathy and turn it into action. “It’s amazing,” Blair said. “I’m at a loss for words.” The post ‘He could barely walk’: Passenger noticed man limping on tarmac raises 174k for him to retire. appeared first on Upworthy.

A Long Island family has found a way to make their small business feel like a summer vacation.  For the Mann family, serving up delicious sweet treats is in their DNA Their roots go back generations to a beloved bakery in Queens, NY, where locals frequented to grab their favorite pastries. And, on occasion, homemade ice cream.  Eric Mann recently shared with The New York Post that he left a job in electrical construction to keep his family’s “namesake” alive. Today, Eric, his wife Linda, and their daughters Caitlin, Amanda, and Cassidy sell premium, small-batch ice cream in Long Island, both classic flavors and creative combinations.  View this post on Instagram But there’s one additional, very whimsical bonus this family-run company offers: they deliver their product by boat.  View this post on Instagram “We figured, why not bring something that we love to the water?” Caitlin, who normally runs the boat with her dad, shared.  The 21-foot vessel is fit with a subzero fridge that can contain 30 gallons of ice cream, and cruises around nearby coves and canals with a phone number proudly displayed on top. Other sailors or waterfront dwellers then have two options: flag them down, or make a quick phone order.  Courtesy of Eric Mann The idea has made such a big splash that the boat now gets booked for parties and special events, and has become a staple of the area. Many don’t even know that the Manns have a brick-and-mortar on dry land as well. Kids and adults alike appreciate not only eating fresh, high-quality sweet treats, but the pure joy and novelty of seeing that boat nearing the dock.  The best of what small businesses have to offer View this post on Instagram There’s something incredibly endearing about how the Manns have carried what started in that Queens bakery forward. Sure, the setting has changed, but the intention remains closely tied to creating community through carefully crafted food. Customers become extended members of the family with each wholesome interaction.  What makes the boat especially genius is how it transforms a small business into something that interacts directly with its surroundings. The waterways of Long Island aren’t just a backdrop; they become part of the operation itself. Weather, tides, and timing all likely play a role in the day-to-day rhythm, giving the work a sense of movement that a storefront alone could never replicate. It also adds a layer of accessibility that feels rare in modern small business stories. Instead of waiting for customers to come to them, the Manns meet people where they already are, whether that’s out on a dock, anchored nearby, or passing through a canal. This can turn a purchase into an experience, one that people are just lucky enough to have happened upon.  Courtesy of Eric Mann In the end, the Mann family’s ice cream boat captures something many people tend to associate with family-run businesses: a sense of nostalgia, familiarity, and attention to detail that feels increasingly rare. But it also pushes that idea forward, showing that tradition does not have to stay fixed in order to stay meaningful. What the Manns have built makes room for both continuity and invention, where old-fashioned craftsmanship and new ideas about how to reach people can exist in the same daily rhythm.  The result is a version of family business that feels alive to the present moment, while still carrying forward the values that made it matter in the first place. The post Long Island family sells homemade ice cream out of their small boat, and locals are obsessed appeared first on Upworthy.

Sixty years after her grandmother captured hearts in the role, one young woman stepped into the very same spotlight. Their remarkable family legacy created a touching full-circle moment spanning generations.