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.

The special instruction Quincy Jones sent out to the several dozen
pop stars invited to participate in the recording of “We Are the
World” was this: “Check your egos at the door.” Jones was the
producer of a record that would eventually go on to sell more than
7 million copies and raise more than $60 million for African famine
relief. But before “We Are the World” could achieve those feats, it
had to be captured on tape—no simple feat considering the number
of major recording artists slated to participate.

With only one chance to get the recording the way he and writers
Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie wanted it, Jones convened the marathon recording session of “We Are the World” at around 10
p.m. on the evening of January 28, 1985, immediately following
the conclusion of the American Music Awards ceremony held
just a few miles away.

Singer/actor/activist Harry Belafonte was the initiator of the events
that led to the recording of “We Are the World.”

A soloist booth song sheet used for the 1985 recording
of ‘We Are the World’, individually signed by the artists
involved.

SANDY KOZEL

(AP)

At 11:38 a.m. EST, on January 28, 1986, the space shuttle
Challenger lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and
Christa McAuliffe is on her way to becoming the first
ordinary U.S. civilian to travel into space. McAuliffe, a
37-year-old high school social studies teacher from New
Hampshire, won a competition that earned her a place
among the seven-member crew of the Challenger.

Seventy-three seconds later, hundreds on the ground,
including Christa’s family, stared in disbelief as the
shuttle broke up in a forking plume of smoke and fire.

The crew of the Challenger space shuttle. Front row,
from left to right, shows astronauts Mike Smith, Dick
Scobee, Ron McNair and in the rear row, from left to
right, are Ellison Onizuka, school teacher Christa
McAuliffe, Greg Jarvis, and Judith Resnik. (NASA) 

A B-17 crew from the United States Army Air Force’s Eighth
Air Force, 385th Bomb Group, plot a target on a map prior
to a mission.

The U.S. Eighth Air Force launched its bombing campaign against
Nazi Germany, one of the largest, most important and most
devastating strategic initiatives in the annals of warfare, on this
day in history, Jan. 27, 1943. 

The crew of the B-17 Flying Fortress Knock-out Dropper
bomber.

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.

The astronauts, the first Americans to die in a spacecraft, had
been participating in a simulation of the Apollo 1 launch that 
was scheduled for the following month.

The Apollo 1 prime crewmembers intended for the first
manned Apollo space flight: (L to R) Edward H. White II,
Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, and Roger B. Chaffee.