Predicting the past.

On May 25th 1961 newly elected President John F. Kennedy stood in front of a joint session of Congress and declared, sternly and sincerely, “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

In October 1959 Superman #132 was published stating that in 1965 2 earthmen and a stowaway Lois Lane were on their way to the moon when their rocket missed their target and ended up on Krypton instead.   Now the dates are a bit off, but the fact that it was that close, that the comics mentioned a trip to the moon a year and a half before America declared that a new mission, I just find that amazing.  Makes me wonder, did JFK ever read a comic book? 

Now I know there had been talk about trips to the moon long before Superman came around, but what a time to be alive.  Still recovering from an unbelievable war and heading into a new one, the prospects of sending a man, for the first time into space, onto another celestial body, the changing of segregation laws, there was a lot going on!  And what a time to set a movie like Superman.  A world divided, how would they react to a being from another planet?