TIM MAGUIRE

On this day in 1996, a single homemade pipe bomb left in a knapsack exploded amid a crowd of spectators in Centennial Olympic Park,
near the main sites of the Olympic Games in Atlanta. The blast
caused by the crude device killed one person and injured 112
others.  

Eric Robert Rudolph, the Olympic Park Bomber.

The monument dedicated to the victims of the balloon bomb.
    

In Lakeview, Oregon on this day in 1945, Mrs. Elsie Mitchell and five
neighborhood children are killed while attempting to drag a Japanese
balloon (similar to the one shown above) out of the woods.

Unbeknownst to Mitchell and the children, the balloon was armed, and
it exploded soon after they began tampering with it. They were the first
and only known American civilians to be killed in the continental United
States during World War II. The U.S. government eventually gave $5,000
in compensation to Mitchell’s husband, and $3,000 each to the families
of Edward Engen, Sherman Shoemaker, Jay Gifford, and Richard and
Ethel Patzke, the five slain children.

The explosive balloon found at Lakeview was a product of one of only
a handful of Japanese attacks against the continental United States,
which were conducted early in the war by the Japanese.

MIKE  GRACIA

    

On this day in 1958, Explorer 1 became the United States’ first
satellite in space. The launch of the satellite — twice the size
of a basketball — was an important moment for the country,
as the Space Race with the Soviet Union was just beginning.

The three men responsible for the success of Explorer 1, at left is Dr. William H. Pickering, former director of JPL, which built and operated
the satellite. Dr. James A. van Allen, center, of the State University of Iowa, designed and built the instrument on Explorer that discovered
the radiation belts which circle the Earth. At right is Dr. Wernher von Braun, leader of the Army’s Redstone Arsenal team which built the
first stage Redstone rocket that launched Explorer 1.

On this day in 1945, Private Eddie Donald Slovik became the only
U.S. soldier since the American Civil War to be executed for
desertion.

The British Parliament enacted The Stamp Act in the American
colonies on this day in 1765. The act was repealed in March of
1766 on the same day that the Parliament passed the Declaratory
Acts which asserted that the British government had free and
total legislative power of the colonies.

On this day in 1952, the United States exploded the first hydrogen
bomb on Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

TIM MAGUIRE

On this day in 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin
E. Aldrin, Jr. became the first men to walk on the moon.

                     
Neil Alden Armstrong                                Buzz Aldrin 
                                                                     (Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr.)

On this day in 1976, America’s Viking I robot spacecraft made a successful landing on Mars.

A Viking lander being tested in the Mojave Desert prior to launch.

On this day in 1944, Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler cheats death as a
bomb planted in a briefcase goes off, but fails to kill him. Hitler
(second from left) Shows Mussolini the Destroyed Barracks at
"The Wolfschanze" shortly after the assassination attempt.

Mountaineer Sir Edmund Percival Hillary
(July 20, 1919 – January 11, 2008) 

Musician Carlos Santana is 71 years old today.

Guitarist Carlos Santana blended rock with Latin American
music and fronted Santana. He won the Best Rock Album
and the Album of the Year Grammys for Supernatural, two
of the eight total Grammys he won in 2000.