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Photo by AP

In 1978 a locally famous saloon in Pasadena ended up on the cover of Esquire magazine with the headline “The Urban Cowboy—Saturday Night Fever, Country & Western Style.” Aaron Latham’s article itself was a big deal, but it was soon eclipsed by an even bigger deal—a movie, Urban Cowboy, starring John Travolta, which was itself followed by a national outbreak of honky-tonk bars with mechanical bulls and “cowboys” who’d never been near a ranch. It all started at Gilley’s, which opened its doors in 1971. They closed eighteen wild years later, and in 1990 the building burned to the ground. Today the property is next to a car lot. (The sign from the original Gilley’s is down the street, in front of the Two Cities Grill & Cantina.) In order to stand where the Gilley’s bull once bucked, you have to walk southeast of the lot about two hundred feet, into the woods—an exercise that is much kinder on the hindquarters than a few seconds on Old Ohmaballs. —KV

Courtesy of the George Bush Presidential Library

One of the most critical friendships in twentieth-century Texas politics was an unlikely alliance between a Republican oilman from New England and a Democratic lawyer from Houston. The careers of George H. W. Bush and James Baker were intertwined from the start. When Bush ran for the U.S. Senate against Lloyd Bentsen, in 1970, Baker switched parties and managed his campaign. Bentsen won, but both Bush and Baker went on to successful careers: Bush as ambassador to the United Nations, Republican national chairman, envoy to China, director of the CIA, and vice president; Baker as undersecretary of Commerce, White House chief of staff, and Secretary of the Treasury. They reconnected in 1980, when Baker managed Bush’s campaign for president; upon Bush’s election, in 1988, Baker became Secretary of State. Twelve years later, when George W. Bush was embroiled in a dispute over the 2000 presidential election, it was Baker who got called in to oversee the recount. So where did this hugely consequential friendship begin? On the tennis courts of the Houston Country Club, where Bush, a lefty, and Baker, a righty, were doubles partners. —HWB

Courtesy of NASA

About 55 hours after Apollo 13 blasted off, command module pilot Jack Swigert uttered one of the most famous (and often misquoted) phrases in NASA’s history: “Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” Swigert and fellow crewmembers James Lovell and Fred Haise had heard a loud bang, and they watched as the pressure dropped on two of the ship’s three fuel cells. The men quickly crammed themselves into the lunar excursion module, but the “lifeboat” was built for two and was never meant to be used for more than 45 hours. All eyes were on the Manned Space Center, in Houston, as flight director Gene Kranz and his twenty-member Mission Control team on the third floor of Building 30N began calculating how to bring the men back. Their solution—a “free return,” in which the crippled ship would loop around the moon to gain enough speed for reentry—would require the astronauts to make three critical course corrections by firing the LEM’s rocket at just the right moment. For the next four days, the world was gripped by the life-or-death drama. On April 17 the astronauts landed safely into the Pacific Ocean, and NASA described the harrowing flight as “a successful failure.” Though a newer Mission Control Center has been built at what is now called the Johnson Space Center, you can still tour the old console-filled room in Building 30N. —JB