Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004)

As the 40th president of the United States, the former movie star
was called the “Great Communicator” for his ability to get through
to ordinary Americans and give them hope and optimism for their
own future and that of their country.

But before his years of Hollywood stardom, and long before
Washington, Ronald Reagan was born on February 6, 1911,
in Tampico, a small town in northwestern Illinois.

Henry Louis Aaron (February 5, 1934 – January 22, 2021) 

Aaron played 23 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB), from
1954 through 1976. Considered one of the greatest baseball
players in history, he spent 21 seasons with the Milwaukee /
Atlanta Braves in the National League (NL) and two seasons
with the Milwaukee Brewers in the American League (AL).

At the time of his retirement, Aaron held most of the game’s key
career power-hitting records. He broke the long-standing MLB
record for career home runs held by Babe Ruth and remained
the career leader for 33 years, until Barry Bonds surpassed his
famous total of 755 in 2007. He hit 24 or more home runs every
year from 1955 through 1973 and is one of only two players to
hit 30 or more home runs in a season at least fifteen times.

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005)
was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known
for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The United
States Congress has honored her as "the first lady of civil rights"
and "the mother of the freedom movement."

The Montgomery bus.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945)
(Photo of Roosevelt taken a day before his death)

On January 30, 1882, future President Franklin Delano Roosevelt 
was born.

Roosevelt grew up the only child in an upper middle-class family
in Hyde Park, New York. He graduated from Harvard in 1904 and
later received a degree from Columbia Law School. His early
involvement in politics included a seat in the New York State
Senate and the role of Woodrow Wilson’s assistant secretary
of the Navy during World War I.

Address to Congress by Franklin D. Roosevelt December
8, 1941.

“Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will 
live in infamy—the United States of America was
suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and
air forces of the Empire of Japan.”

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)