#wallyfunk — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #wallyfunk, aggregated by home.social.
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Last Word obit programme
Brenda Fricker: The first Irish woman to win an Oscar
Brenda Fricker became the first Irish woman to win an Academy Award for her performance in the film “My Left Foot”. She began her career with parts in Ireland’s first soap opera Tolka Row, ITV’s Coronation Street, and became a household name as the nurse Megan Roach in Casualty on the BBC. Her friend and fellow actress Anna Friel pays tribute.
The BBC’s long-serving correspondent David Willey was a renowned authority on the Vatican, covering the lives and deaths of five popes. Before he settled in Rome, David had travelled widely for the BBC, reporting from Algeria, the Vietnam War and China just after the communist revolution. Two of his colleagues, former Chief News Correspondent Kate Adie and International Editor Jeremy Bowen, share their memories of working with him.
The name David Austin is forever indelibly associated with the rose growing business. He created some of the most sought after roses, naming new varieties after fictional or real-life people, including Gabriel Oak from Far From the Madding Crowd, the actress Dame Judi Dench and ceramicist Emma Bridgewater - who pays tribute to him alongside Gardeners' World presenter Sue Kent.
Wally Funk broke records as the oldest person to go to space onboard Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin Rocket in 2021. In the early 1960s she was part of a group of women known as the Mercury 13 who were tested to see if they could compete with male astronauts for a place in the American space programme. But the project was abandoned and her hopes dashed. Loretta Hall, who co-wrote her memoir, tells us her story.
( ... also featuring The Pink Panther saxophone guy ...)
Producer: Ben Mitchell
Assistant Producer: Catherine Powell
Researcher: Jesse Edwards
Editor: Andrea KennedyArchive:
"My Left Foot", Ferndale Films, Granada Film, RTÉ, Hell's Kitchen Films; BBC One, Wogan, 16/02/1990; 62nd Academy Awards, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 26/03/1990; BBC Radio 4, Woman's Hour, 05/03/1997; BBC One, Wogan, 15/02/1991; BBC Radio 4, Sunday, 10/03/2013; BBC Radio 4, Archive on 4, From our Rome Correspondent, 07/04/2012; BBC One, RHS Chelsea Flower Show, 21/05/2007; BBC One, Football Focus, 06/10/2018; BBC Radio 4, Woman's Hour, 19/06/2019; BBC News, 19/06/1983; Blue Origin, YouTube, 20/07/2021; Other audio courtesy of Loretta Hall -
Very sad to learn we lost the remarkable Wally Funk, a pioneering aviatrix & member of the Mercury 13, who could have been early astronauts, if not for the sexism of the 1960s (the women often out performed the male astronaut candidates).
An amazing life.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/09/wally-funk-astronaut-dies
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(ancient webpage from the medieval web)
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Women with the Right Stuff
The Documentary PodcastThe first footsteps on the Moon were one giant step for 'man', but from the early days of aeronautics women have also been involved in space travel. In Women with the Right Stuff, presenter, pilot and aspiring astronaut Wally Funk pays tribute to the pioneers, meets some of those involved within today’s space industry, and hears from the woman who might be among the crew for the first human mission to Mars.
Wally has first hand experience of the early days of space travel in America. She undertook secret tests to become an astronaut in 1961 and, along with 12 other female pilots, passed the extremely tough physical tests to become an unofficial member of the ‘Mercury 13’ – the women who, given a chance, could have gone into space before Russia’s Valentina Tereshkova made history.
Wally hears from astronauts Jessica Meier, Helen Sharman, Eileen Collins and Samantha Cristoforetti; mission control flight director Mary Lawrence; space historian David J Shayler; and shares her 1961 astronaut medical tests with NASA flight surgeon Shannan Moynihan.
Over 50 years after those tests, Wally is still flying (she takes her producer above Dallas in a Cessna) but she is yet to get into space. However Wally is on the waiting list for one of the first commercial space tourism flights and is prepared to make history as yet another woman with the right stuff.
Image: A Wally Funk playing card, Wally was one of the original Mercury 13, Credit: BBC
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just what a cool name is Wally Funk everyone??!! :100a: :blobheartraccoon: #wallyfunk
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Wally Funk has died at age 87. The aviation pioneer completed the program to become an astronaut in the early 1960s but was not allowed to go to space because she was a woman. She then became a groundbreaking flight instructor, training more than 3,000 pilots, and eventually went to space at age 82 as part of Blue Origin's New Shepard NS-16 mission. Here's @CBSNews's story about her life, plus a 2019 interview with her from @TexasMonthly.
