ROSS SIMPSON

Fred McFeely Rogers (March 20, 1928 – February 27, 2003)

Fred Rogers was an author, producer, and Presbyterian minister
who was the creator, producer and host of all 895 episodes the
preschool television series Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. He
also composed more than 200 songs and was the puppeteer of 14
characters. Rogers died of stomach cancer at age 74.

Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood is a half-hour educational children’s television series that was created and hosted by Fred Rogers. The
series Misterogers debuted in Canada on October 15, 1962, on CBC Television. In 1966,

Rogers moved back to the U.S. creating Misterogers’ Neighborhood
on the regional Eastern Educational Television Network a forerunner
of today’s American Public Television. The US national debut of the
show occurred on February 19, 1968. It aired on NET and PBS until
August 31, 2001

A launch pad fire during Apollo program tests at Cape Canaveral,
Florida, killed astronauts Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Edward H. White
II, and Roger B. Chaffee. 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.

On October 8, 1871, flames sparked in the Chicago barn of Patrick
and Catherine O’Leary, igniting a two-day blaze that kills between
200 and 300 people, destroys 17,450 buildings, leaves 100,000
homeless and causes an estimated $200 million (in 1871 dollars;
roughly $4 billion in 2021 dollars) in damages.

Legend has it that a cow kicked over a lantern in the O’Leary barn
and started the fire, but other theories hold that humans or even a
comet may have been responsible for the event that left four square
miles of the Windy City, including its business district, in ruins.

Dry weather and an abundance of wooden buildings, streets and
sidewalks made Chicago vulnerable to fire. The city averaged two
fires per day in 1870; there were 20 fires throughout Chicago the
week before the Great Fire of 1871.

CAMILLE BOHANNON

The original Instrument of Surrender of Japan’s surrender to the
Allied Forces in World War II is shown at an exhibition held by
the Japanese Foreign Ministry,