Monday, January 28, 2013

THIS DAY IN HISTORY – JANUARY 28


HISTORICAL EVENTS



From Google Images

1958 Charles Starkweather (19) and  his 14 year-old girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, kill 10 people in the American heartland.


1964 
– Soviets shoot down U.S. jet during Cold War. 



1986 – Seven American astronauts, including 37 year-old school teacher Christa McAuliffe, were killed when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded after launch . President Reagan's special commission to investigate the tragedy included Nobel Laureate physicist Richard Feynman and concluded that low temperatures caused the failure of an O-ring seal in one of the solid fuel rockets. 

I was living in Norway at the time and had not heard about the event when announced on the Norwegian news. The next morning at work I was shocked to hear one of my Norwegian colleagues inform me of the fact and thought he was "joking".



FAMOUS BIRTHS


1225 – Saint Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274).




1768  Frederick VI, Danish king (1808-39) who famously lost Norway to Sweden (1814).



From Google Images

1825 
– George Edward Pickett, Major General (Confederate Army), died in 1875. Famous for his participation at the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War.



1936 Actor Alan Alda, born Alphonso D'Abruzzo in NYC ("Hawkeye Pierce", M*A*S*H).




FAMOUS DEATHS


814 – Charlemagne, German emperor/Roman Emperor (800-814), dies at 71. He was crowned in 774 on the site of St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome.



1547 – Henry VIII, King of England (1509-47), dies at 55.


From Google Images

2004 Captain Lloyd M. Bucher, U.S. Navy (b. 1927). His ship, the USS Pueblo, was famously captured by North Korea on January 23, 1968.



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