Soviet Colonel Rudolf Abel         Francis Gary Powers
                                                    

On February 10, 1962, American spy pilot Francis Gary Powers 
was released by the Soviets in exchange for Soviet Colonel
Rudolf Abel, a senior KGB spy who was caught in the United
States five years earlier.

The Glienicke bridge (known as the Bridge of Spies) just
after the Powers swap.

Francis Gary Powers
(August 17, 1929 – August 1, 1977)

Powers later worked as a helicopter pilot
for KNBC in Los Angeles and died in a
1977 helicopter crash.

While in orbit 170 miles above Earth, Navy Captain Bruce
McCandless II became the first human being to perform
an untethered spacewalk, when he exits the U.S. space
shuttle Challenger and maneuvers freely, using a bulky
white jet pack of his own design.

McCandless orbited Earth in tangent with the shuttle at
speeds greater than 17,500 miles per hour—the speed
at which satellites normally orbit Earth—and flew up to
320 feet away from the Challenger. After an hour and a
half of testing and flying the jet-powered backpack and
admiring Earth, McCandless safely reentered the shuttle.

Bruce McCandless II
(June 8, 1937 – December 21, 2017)

SEATTLE  (KOMO)  —  An Alaska Airlines flight attendant was
recently honored by Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo after saving
rare Chilean flamingo eggs on a flight last August.

A zoo official transporting rare was Chilean flamingo eggs from
Zoo Atlanta to Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo when the incubator
keeping them warm stopped working.

Flight attendant Amber said “A passenger rang the call button
and asked if I would help keep some eggs warm.”

Alaska said Amber went to the galley, found some rubber gloves,
and filled them with warm water before bringing them to the zoo
official. The zoo officials then wrapped the gloves around the
eggs to make a makeshift, yet cozy nest.

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.