SANDY KOZEL

On this day in 1970, an oxygen tank exploded on Apollo 13,
preventing a planned moon landing.

ROSS SIMPSON

Susan B. Anthony (February 15, 1820 – March 13, 1906).

Susan B. Anthony was an American social reformer and women’s rights
activist who played a pivotal role in the women’s suffrage movement.

The Susan B. Anthony dollar is a United States dollar coin minted from 1979
to 1981, when production was suspended due to poor public acceptance,
and then again in 1999. Intended as a replacement for the cumbersome
Eisenhower dollar, the new smaller one dollar coin went through testing
of several shapes and compositions, but all were opposed by the vending
machine industry, a powerful lobby affecting coin legislation. Finally, a
round planchet with an eleven-sided inner border was chosen for the
smaller dollar.

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.

On December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 from London to exploded in midair
over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew members
aboard, as well as 11 Lockerbie residents on the ground. A bomb hidden
inside an audio cassette player detonated in the cargo area when the plane
was at an altitude of 31,000 feet. The disaster, which became the subject of
Britain’s largest criminal investigation, was believed to be an attack against
the United States. One hundred eighty nine of the victims were American.

Islamic terrorists were accused of planting the bomb on the plane while it
was at the airport in Frankfurt, Germany.

Flight 103 impact crater at Lockerbie, Scotland.

    
Depiction of the moment the bomb was detonated.

DAVID MELENDY

In Texas City, TX, on this day in 1947, the French ship
Grandcamp, carrying ammonium nitrate fertilizer,
caught fire and blew up. The explosions and resulting
fires killed 576 people.

Rescue workers search for survivors at the Texas City
Terminal Building after disaster.

Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin ( April 16, 1889 – December 25, 1977)

Chaplin was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose
to fame in the era of silent film.

The Tramp