MIKE GRACIA

Nearly 50 years after the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral,
Wyatt Earp died quietly in Los Angeles at the age of 80.

The Earp brothers had long been competing with the Clanton-
McClaury ranching families for political and economic control
of Tombstone, Arizona, and the surrounding region.

On October 26, 1881, the simmering tensions finally boiled
over into violence, and Wyatt, his brothers Virgil and Morgan,
and his close friend, Doc Holliday, killed three men from the
Clanton and McLaury clans in a 30-second shoot-out on a
Tombstone street near the O.K. Corral (below).

On January 13, 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed
the first African American cabinet member, making Robert C.
Weaver head of the Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD). The agency that develops and
implements national housing policy and enforces fair
housing laws.
 

In keeping with his vision for a Great Society, Johnson
sought to improve race relations and eliminate urban
blight.

As many of the country’s African Americans lived in run-
down inner-city areas, appointing Weaver was an attempt
to show his African American constituency that he meant
business on both counts.

SANDY KOZEL

On January 12,1986, astronaut and physicist Franklin Chang-
Diaz became the first Hispanic American to fly in space on the
Space Shuttle Columbia, which orbited Earth 96 times, deployed
the SATCOM KU satellite used for broadcast television and
conducted experiments in astrophysics. It was a high point in
an aeronautical career with plenty of high points.

That six-day flight was the first of his seven space missions,
tying the record for most space flights held by astronaut Jerry
Ross.

Franklin Ramon Chang-Díaz will be 76 in
April.