The James Logan Courier

By Liz Ruskin
McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)

LONDON — A giddy carnival erupted in the alley beside Europe's largest bookstore Friday night, as thousands of Harry Potter fans waited for the stroke of midnight, when the seventh and final book in the Potter series was released.

At the front of the line, near the front door to the Waterstone's store at Piccadilly Circus, a few haggard fans had been waiting since Wednesday, but where the queue bent around the corner the absurdist fun began.

A purple-robed man in a pointy hat shouted into his cell phone and danced with shrieking girls waving scarves of maroon and gold, Harry Potter's house colors. A few yards away, Alon and Yuval Avrami, 17-year-old identical twins from Jerusalem, passionately defended the virtue of Snape, one of Harry's professors, to anyone who would listen. Someone blew a kazoo. Amid the cacophony, two fans made up as owls perched in silence, rereading their Potter tomes.

From wikipedia:
Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr. (November 18, 1923 – July 21, 1998) (Rear Admiral, USN, Ret.) was the second person and the first American astronaut in space. He later commanded the Apollo 14 mission, and was the fifth man to walk on the moon.

Education
Born in Derry, New Hampshire, Shepard graduated from Admiral Farragut Academy in 1941, received a Bachelor of Science degree from the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1944, an Honorary Master of Arts degree from Dartmouth College in 1962, an Honorary Doctorate of Science from Miami University (Oxford, Ohio) in 1971, and an Honorary Doctorate of Humanities from Franklin Pierce College in 1972. He graduated from the United States Naval Test Pilot School in 1951 and the Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island in 1957.

Watch Alan Shepard and Apollo 14 his crew land on the moon, one of many video clips of the Apollo 14 mission available free from NASA.