A launch pad fire during Apollo program tests at Cape Canaveral,
Florida, killed astronauts Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Edward H. White
II, and Roger B. Chaffee. An investigation indicated that a faulty
electrical wire inside the Apollo 1 command module was the
probable cause of the fire. The astronauts, the first Americans
to die in a spacecraft, had been participating in a simulation of
the Apollo 1 launch scheduled for the following month.