Debris from the space shuttle Columbia streaks across the
sky over Tyler, Texas.

On February 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia brook up while
entering the atmosphere over Texas, killing all seven crew
members on board.

The Columbia‘s 28th space mission, designated STS-107, was
originally scheduled to launch on January 11, 2001, but was
delayed numerous times for a variety of reasons over nearly
two years. Columbia finally launched on January 16, 2003, with
a crew of seven. Eighty seconds into the launch, a piece of foam insulation broke off from the shuttle’s propellant tank and hit the
edge of the shuttle’s left wing.

The Space Shuttle Columbia crew, left to right. Front row:
Rick Husband, Kalpana Chawla, William McCool. Back row: David Brown, Laurel Clark, Michael Anderson and Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon. (AP file)

The crew of the space shuttle Columbia on the day of launch.

Accident investigators reconstructed space shuttle Columbia from recovered debris.

February 1, 1978: Antislavery crusader and Civil War veteran
Harriet Tubman became the first African American woman to
appear on a U.S. postage stamp, the first in the Post Office’s
Black Heritage Series. Tubman’s appearance on stamps was
emblematic both of the progress made in recognizing African

Americans’ contributions to American history and the ongoing
effort to put abolitionists on equal footing with slaveowners in
the nation’s historical canon.

Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross)
(c. March 1822– March 10, 1913)

Then and now location from the 1978 film starring Donald
Sutherland. 

Private Eddie Slovik is the only American military serviceman
executed for desertion (during World War II) since the American
Civil War.

In August of 1944, as he and a companion were on the way to the
front lines, they became lost in the chaos of battle and stumbled
upon a Canadian unit that took them in.

When he returned to his unit in October, he signed a confession
of desertion, claiming he would run away again if forced to fight,
and submitted it to an officer of the 28th. The officer advised
Slovik to take the confession back, as the consequences were
serious. Slovik refused and was confined to the stockade.

Eisenhower upheld the death sentence and Slovik was shot and
killed by a 12-man firing squad in eastern France.

Wedding photo, 1942.

The Execution of Private Slovik is a made-
for-TV movie starring Martin Sheen, it
premiered March 13, 1974 on NBC.

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.”