SANDY KOZEL

(AP)

At 11:38 a.m. EST, on January 28, 1986, the space shuttle
Challenger lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and
Christa McAuliffe is on her way to becoming the first
ordinary U.S. civilian to travel into space. McAuliffe, a
37-year-old high school social studies teacher from New
Hampshire, won a competition that earned her a place
among the seven-member crew of the Challenger.

Seventy-three seconds later, hundreds on the ground,
including Christa’s family, stared in disbelief as the
shuttle broke up in a forking plume of smoke and fire.

The crew of the Challenger space shuttle. Front row,
from left to right, shows astronauts Mike Smith, Dick
Scobee, Ron McNair and in the rear row, from left to
right, are Ellison Onizuka, school teacher Christa
McAuliffe, Greg Jarvis, and Judith Resnik. (NASA) 

A B-17 crew from the United States Army Air Force’s Eighth
Air Force, 385th Bomb Group, plot a target on a map prior
to a mission.

The U.S. Eighth Air Force launched its bombing campaign against
Nazi Germany, one of the largest, most important and most
devastating strategic initiatives in the annals of warfare, on this
day in history, Jan. 27, 1943. 

The crew of the B-17 Flying Fortress Knock-out Dropper
bomber.

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.

The astronauts, the first Americans to die in a spacecraft, had
been participating in a simulation of the Apollo 1 launch that 
was scheduled for the following month.

The Apollo 1 prime crewmembers intended for the first
manned Apollo space flight: (L to R) Edward H. White II,
Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, and Roger B. Chaffee.

Frank P. Thomas

Donald J. Thomas

 
Burger Chef advertisement (1966).

On January 26, 1926, John Logie Baird (1888 – 1946) a Scottish
inventor, gave the first public demonstration of a true television
system in London (above), which launched a revolution in the
communication and entertainment fields.

Baird’s first television program showed the heads of two
ventriloquist dummies, which he operated in front of the
camera apparatus out of view of the audience (below).          

The original television model, invented by the Scottish
television pioneer John Logie Baird.

This image is the first recorded picture taken from a TV
screen.