Moon

GAPYEONG, South Korea - Unification Church patriarch Sun Myung Moon leaves behind children who have been groomed to lead a religious movement famous for its mass weddings and business interests - if family feuds don't bring down the empire. Moon, the charismatic and controversial founder of the church, died Monday at age 92 at a church-owned hospital near his home in Gapyeong County, northeast of Seoul, two weeks after being hospitalized with pneumonia, church officials said. Flags flew at half-staff at a Unification Church in Seoul as followers trickled in, some wiping away tears as they wondered what would happen to a movement defined for decades by the man who founded it in 1954.

GAPYEONG, South Korea - The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, 92, the self-proclaimed messiah who turned his Unification Church into a worldwide religious movement and befriended North Korean leaders as well as U.S. presidents, died Sunday, church officials said. Mr. Moon died at a church-owned hospital near his home in Gapyeong, northeast of Seoul, two weeks after being hospitalized with pneumonia, Unification Church spokesman Ahn Ho-yeul told the Associated Press. His wife and children were at his side, Ahn said.

By David Rothkopf The lodge at Camp Skoglund was an A-frame, red with white trim. It was the center of activity at the boys' camp, and on the night of July 20, 1969, it was unusually quiet. On most nights, the counselors would play music. Cream was popular that summer, and Iron Butterfly. Many of us would tap into our snack accounts to buy orange sodas and chips, and play games or just goof around. But on this night, everyone sat on the floor in a semicircle as a counselors fiddled with the rabbit-ear antenna on a black-and-white television as we squinted to discern Walter Cronkite's familiar face in the static.

Melissa Farkouh is a board member of the Friends of the Medal of Honor Grove, and director of institutional advancement at the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge, home of the grove Sometimes, stories of heroism and hope begin with something as simple as a one-inch sugar packet. And memories of one such packet were stirred last weekend, with the death of Neil Armstrong, 82, commander of Apollo 11 and the first man to walk on the moon. As Armstrong's place in history was being discussed, so many stories began with people talking about where they were July 20, 1969, watching as Armstrong took that "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

The moon won't be blue tonight. Or sad. Even if you sing the Rodgers & Hart song, "Blue Moon. " It's just another full moon, due to rise at 7:17 in Philadelphia, except for a statistical quirk: August already had one, on the 2d. These days, that gets it called a "blue moon" - because of a 1946 goof in Sky & Telescope Magazine. Until then, nobody used "blue moon" to mean "No. 2 full moon in 1 month. " The term was used, at least as far back as the 1930s by the Maine Farmers Almanac, in a much more complicated way. It referred to the third full moon when four fell in a single season.

CINCINNATI - Neil Armstrong was a humble hero who saw himself as a team player and never capitalized on his celebrity as the first man to walk on the moon, mourners said Friday outside a private service attended by fellow space pioneers, including his two crewmates on the historic Apollo 11 mission. Hundreds of people attended a closed service for Armstrong Friday at a private club in suburban Cincinnati. A national memorial service has been scheduled for Sept. 12 in Washington, although no other details have been released on the service or burial plans for Armstrong.

Once upon a time, a man walked on the moon. He climbed down the ladder onto lunar soil, the first human being ever to do so. "That's one small step for [a] man," he famously said, "one giant leap for mankind. " It was one of history's greatest feats, and we had done it, we Americans. That man died Saturday of complications from a cardiovascular procedure. Neil Armstrong, a Korean War fighter pilot from small-town Ohio, was 82. He never spoke much about what he had done, shied away from publicity, never even wrote a memoir.

WASHINGTON - The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church, is being treated for pneumonia in an intensive-care unit at a Seoul hospital. The Rev. Joshua Cotter, vice president of the Unification Church USA, said Moon entered the hospital on Monday and was in critical condition. He said church members were praying and fasting for his quick recovery. A memo sent to church officials early Wednesday states that Moon, 93, "was pushing his limits in carrying out his schedule" when he fell ill and that his wife and children were with him. - Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS - The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly denounced Syria's crackdown on dissent Friday in a symbolic effort meant to push the deadlocked Security Council and the world at large into action on stopping the country's civil war. Before the vote, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon reminded the Assembly of the fresh violence in the city of Aleppo and drew comparisons between the failure to act in Syria with the international community's failure...