Crash site as it looks today is located west of intersection of 315th
Street and Gull Avenue., Clear Lake, IA.

    
This 1947 Beechcraft Model 35 Bonanza is the same type aircraft in which Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper were killed.
 

SANDY KOZEL

On January 28, 1986, the NASA Space Shuttle orbiter undertaking mission
STS-51-L and the tenth flight of Space Shuttle Challenger  broke apart 73
seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members aboard: five NASA
astronauts, one payload specialist, and a civilian school teacher.

The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of
Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 11:39 a.m. EST.

Space Shuttle Challanger crew: Back row from left to right…Ellison
S. Onizuka, Sharon Christa McAuliffe, Greg Jarvis, and Judy Resnik.
In the front row from left to right: Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee,
and Ron McNair.

President Reagan delivers a nationwide speech following the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

Challenger shuttle memorial in Arlington cemetery, Washington DC.

Kobe Bean Bryant (August 23, 1978 – January 26, 2020)

CALABASAS, Calif. – Former NBA superstar Kobe Bryant has died in a
helicopter crash in California.

Nine people were on board when the helicopter went down near Calabasas
this morning. Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter Gianna were among the
passengers. Bryant’s wife Vanessa was reportedly not on the helicopter.

Kobe Bryant played his entire 20-year NBA career with the Los Angeles
Lakers and finished his career as one of the best to ever play the game.     

 
ED DONAHUE
    
    
    

Space Shuttle Columbia’s last Launch.     
     
 

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.

When Columbia re-entered the earth’s atmosphere on the morning of
February 1, 2003, the damage allowed hot atmospheric gases to
penetrate the heat shield and destroy the internal wing structure,
which caused the spacecraft to become unstable and break apart.

The first debris began falling to the ground in West Texas near Lubbock
at 8:58 a.m. One minute later, the last communication from the crew of
five men and two women was heard, and at 9 a.m. the space shuttle
disintegrated over northeast Texas, near Dallas.  
     
     
    

      
        
                      
     
    
   
       
 
Crewmember helmet found in a field after the space shuttle Columbia 
disaster.

United Airlines Flight 173 was a scheduled flight from John F.
Kennedy International Airport in New York City to Portland
International Airport in Portland, Oregon, with a scheduled stop
in Denver, Colorado. On December 28, 1978, the aircraft flying
this route ran out of fuel while troubleshooting a landing gear
problem and crashed in a suburban Portland neighborhood
near NE 157th Avenue and East Burnside Street killing 10
people. 

Flight 173 was piloted by an experienced cockpit crew,
consisting of Captain Malburn McBroom (above), First
Officer Roderick "Rod" Beebe, and Flight Engineer
Forrest Mendenhall.  McBroom had been with United
Airlines for 27 years; he was one of the airline’s most
senior pilots with more than 27,600 hours of flight time,
of which about 5,500 hours had been as a DC-8 captain.