A Delta Air Lines McDonnell Douglas DC-9-30, similar
to the one involved.

On July 31, 1973, Delta Flight 723 struck a concrete seawall
as it descended into Boston’s Logan International Airport
amid heavy ground fog.

The collision broke off some of the fuselage and the plane
slimed into the ground, breaking apart and bursting into
flames.

Almost all on board died instantly in what became the worst
air disaster at Logan and in all of New England.

ROSS SIMPSON

A Piper Saratoga similar to the accident aircraft.

On July 16, 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr. died when the light
aircraft he was piloting crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off
Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.

Kennedy’s wife, Carolyn Bessette, and sister-in-law, Lauren
Bessette, were also on board and died.

The Piper Saratoga departed New Jersey‘s Essex County
Airport; its intended route was along the coastline of
Connecticut and across Rhode Island Sound to Martha’s
Vineyard Airport.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr.
(November 25, 1960 – July 16, 1999

On February 27, 1980, the long-lost glasses of rocker Buddy
Holly, who died in a deadly plane crash in 1959, were found—
filed away in a manila envelope in a court clerk’s office marked
"Charles Harden Holly".

That envelope was opened by Sheriff Jerry Allen. The glasses
were eventually returned to Holly’s widow.

A Beechcraft Bonanza carrying Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens 
and “The Big Bopper” Richardson, crashed outside Clear
Lake, Iowa, in the early morning hours of February 3, 1959.
 

The Apollo 1 crew, from left, Edward H. White II, Virgil I.
"Gus" Grissom, and Roger B. Chaffee.

A launch pad fire during Apollo program tests at Cape Canaveral,
Florida, killed all three astronauts of Apollo 1 on this day in 1967. 
     
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.

The entrance to the tribute to the three astronauts who died
in the fire.

The three-part hatch that was in place on the Apollo 1
spacecraft is shown in the tribute.This is the first time
any part of the Apollo 1 spacecraft has been displayed
publicly. 

ED DANAHUE

The final flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia took
place from January 16, 2003 to February 1, 2003.

The mission ended in disaster when the shuttle
broke apart during reentry, killing all seven crew
members.

The space shuttle Columbia lifting off on its final flight.