SANDY KOZEL

The Hindenburg flies over Manhattan on May 6, 1937.

Hindenburg Crash Site Memorial today in Lakehurst, NJ .

The monument dedicated to the victims of the balloon bomb.
    

In Lakeview, Oregon on this day in 1945, Mrs. Elsie Mitchell and five
neighborhood children are killed while attempting to drag a Japanese
balloon (similar to the one shown above) out of the woods.

Unbeknownst to Mitchell and the children, the balloon was armed, and
it exploded soon after they began tampering with it. They were the first
and only known American civilians to be killed in the continental United
States during World War II. The U.S. government eventually gave $5,000
in compensation to Mitchell’s husband, and $3,000 each to the families
of Edward Engen, Sherman Shoemaker, Jay Gifford, and Richard and
Ethel Patzke, the five slain children.

The explosive balloon found at Lakeview was a product of one of only
a handful of Japanese attacks against the continental United States,
which were conducted early in the war by the Japanese.

CAMILLE
BOHANNON

Astronaut Alan B. Shepard, Jr., walking on the deck of the aircraft
carrier USS Champlain on May 5, 1961, after the return of his
Mercury spacecraft Freedom 7 (in background) from the first
manned suborbital al flight.

President John F. Kennedy (right) congratulates astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr., (left) the first American in space, on his historic May
5th, 1961 ride in the Freedom 7 spacecraft and presents him with
the NASA Distinguished Service Award. 

Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. (November 18, 1923 – July 21, 1998)

Two commuter trains and a freight train collide near Tokyo, Japan,
killing more than 160 people and injuring twice that number.  

The subsequent investigation into the accident resulted in the
indictment of nine of the freight train’s crew members for criminal negligence.

SANDY KOZEL