Apollo13 – view of the crippled Service Module after
separation.     
     
     
     
 

On April 13, 1970, disaster struck 200,000 miles from Earth
when oxygen tank No. 2 blew up on Apollo 13, the third
manned lunar landing mission. Astronauts James A. Lovell,
John L. Swigert, and Fred W. Haise had left Earth two days
before for the Fra Mauro highlands of the moon but were
forced to turn their attention to simply making it home alive.

At NASA Mission Control in Houston’s Manned Spacecraft Center, Donald K. "Deke" Slayton, left, director of flight
crew operations, holds lithium hydroxide canisters attached
to a hose, a makeshift repair to reduce the dangerous levels
of carbon dioxide aboard the crippled spacecraft Apollo 13.

On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, carrying
227 passengers and 12 crew members, lost contact with
air traffic control less than an hour after taking off from 
Kuala Lumpur, then veers off course, disappears and
most of the plane, and everyone on board, were never 
seen again.

About an hour after Flight 370 was scheduled to land in
Beijing, Malaysia Airlines announced it was missing.

Prior to the aircraft’s mysterious disappearance, it had
been flying seemingly without incident.

There were no distress signals from the plane, reports
of bad weather or technical problems.

In 2015, French police officers carried a piece of airplane
debris on the island of Réunion which later proved to
have been from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

More debris from Flight 370 found.

Debris from the space shuttle Columbia streaks across the
sky over Tyler, Texas.

On February 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia brook up while
entering the atmosphere over Texas, killing all seven crew
members on board.

The Columbia‘s 28th space mission, designated STS-107, was
originally scheduled to launch on January 11, 2001, but was
delayed numerous times for a variety of reasons over nearly
two years. Columbia finally launched on January 16, 2003, with
a crew of seven. Eighty seconds into the launch, a piece of foam insulation broke off from the shuttle’s propellant tank and hit the
edge of the shuttle’s left wing.

The Space Shuttle Columbia crew, left to right. Front row:
Rick Husband, Kalpana Chawla, William McCool. Back row: David Brown, Laurel Clark, Michael Anderson and Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon. (AP file)

The crew of the space shuttle Columbia on the day of launch.

Accident investigators reconstructed space shuttle Columbia from recovered debris.

The U.S. State Department angrily accused the Soviet Union of
shooting down an unarmed American jet that strayed into East
German airspace. Three U.S. officers aboard the plane were
killed in the incident. The Soviets responded with charges that
the flight was a “gross provocation,” and the incident was an
ugly reminder of  the heightened East-West tensions of the Cold
War-era.

The occupants of the aircraft were Lieutenant Colonel Gerald K. Hannaford, Captain Donald Grant Millard and Captain John F.
Lorraine.

According to the U.S. military, the jet was on a training flight over
West Germany and pilots became disoriented by a violent storm
that led the plane to veer nearly 100 miles off course.

Memorial at the crash site near Vogelsberg.

North American T-39A Sabre Liner USAF.

The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-19S "Farmer" at the National
Museum of the United States Air Force.

On January 15, 2009, a potential disaster turned into a heroic
display of skill and composure when Captain Chesley Burnett Sullenberger III and co-pilot Jeffrey Skiles safely land the
plane they were piloting on New York City’s Hudson River
after a bird strike caused its engines to fail. David Paterson,
governor of New York at the time, dubbed the incident the
“miracle on the Hudson.”  

Sullenberger, a former Air Force fighter pilot with decades of
flying experience, received a slew of honors for his actions,
including an invitation to Barack Obama’s presidential
inauguration and resolutions of praise from the U.S.
Congress.

Captain Chesley Burnett Sullenberger III and co-pilot Jeffrey Skiles.

Chesley Burnett "Sully" Sullenberger III will
turn 73 on January 23rd. 

The incident was adapted into the feature film
Sully, directed by Clint Eastwood. It starred Tom        
Hanks as Sullenberger and Aaron Eckhart as      
Skiles. It was released by Warner Bros. on
September 9, 2016.