Remembering the Challenger Disaster

Do you remember what you were doing 30 years ago today, when you heard the shuttle had exploded?

Paris 'Charlie Hebdo' attack anniversary

Paris police shoot dead knife-wielding man on 'Charlie Hebdo' anniversary https://t.co/gugPVWvCv8 pic.twitter.com/Jg1WFk661y

— Eyewitness News (@ewnupdates) January 7, 2016

"Peaceful rallies in Ferguson give way to violence, gunfire"

"St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said the unidentified man, believed to be in his mid-20s, was hospitalized in critical and unstable condition."

Speaking to reporters at a predawn news conference on Monday, Belmar estimated that more than 40 rounds had been unleashed in what he called "a remarkable amount of gunfire."

"These were criminals; they weren't protesters," he said of the shooters. "There is a small group of people out there that are intent on making sure that we don't have peace that prevails."

At least three officers were injured in the melee, one struck in the face with a brick hurled from the crowd and two others pepper-sprayed by protesters, Belmar said.

A member of the local news media was also robbed and assaulted in a nearby parking lot amid Sunday night's turmoil, during which police reported making five arrests.

Separately, two teenage males were shot early on Monday in a drive-by attack near a sidewalk shrine erected in Brown's memory beside the spot where he was killed, but their wounds were not considered life-threatening, police said...

The scene changed dramatically after dark. Dozens of protesters converged on West Florissant Avenue, which bore the brunt of last summer's rioting, and chanted: "Shut it down" in the midst of a severe thunderstorm.

A phalanx of helmeted police wearing body armor and carrying shields moved in. Protesters briefly fell away before regrouping to confront the line of officers, who ordered them to disperse.

The protesters, locking arms and edging closer to the police cordon, began throwing water bottles and shouting: "We are ready for war!" Both sides held their ground while clergy members and activists appealed for calm.

Bursts of gunfire shattered the face-off, sending police crouching behind their patrol cars and demonstrators scurrying for cover. Helicopters whirred overhead as additional police armed with assault rifles swarmed the area, some roaring down the street in armored vehicles in the direction of the gunfire.

Merchants, some armed, stood guard outside their businesses early Monday after the disturbances, which unfolded around the corner from where Brown was gunned down on Aug. 9, 2014, by officer Darren Wilson.

"The Irish eyewitness to the atomic bomb at Nagasaki"

"Dr MacCarthy survived the war and spent the rest of his life in London. He died in 1995. His autobiography A Doctor’s War was published in 1979. He is now the subject of an documentary entitled A Doctor’s Sword. Extract from A Doctor’s War by Dr Aidan MacCarthy:"

On August 9th the day started bright and clear with only occasional clouds to the north. During a 10-minute break in our clearing work, round about 10.45am, some of our men had gone back to the camp which was close by, to get a drink of water or a cigarette.

High above us we saw eight vapour trails showing two separate four engine bombers, heading south. These were B-29 bombers, or B-NEE-JU-KU’s as the Japanese called them. They had been seen going north earlier that morning. Then they suddenly altered course and came back over Nagasaki.
This manoeuvre was enough to send us wildly dashing for the air-raid shelters. To dig our own graves with a view to being shot by the Japanese was one thing, but to be killed by our own allies was far too galling.

In the shelters we prayed that there would not be a direct hit. A couple of POWs did not bother to go into the shelters, staying on the surface and crouching on the ground in the shadow of the barrack huts.

They were gazing at the sky, watching the approaching vapour trails. One of them shouted to us that three small parachutes had dropped.

There then followed a blue flash, accompanied by a very bright magnesium-type flare which blinded them. Then came a frighteningly loud but rather flat explosion which was followed by a blast of hot air.

Some of this could be felt even by us as it came through the shelter openings, which were very rarely closed owing to the poor ventilation. The explosions we heard seemed to be two in number and this puzzled experts when later we were being debriefed.

One possible explanation is that the second sound was a giant echo from the surrounding hills. All this was followed by eerie silence. Then an Australian POW stuck his head out of the shelter opening, looked around and ducked back in, his face expressing incredulity. This brought the rest of us scrambling to our feet and a panic rush to the exits. The sight that greeted us halted us in our tracks.

As we slowly surveyed the scene around us, we became aware that the camp had to all intents and purposes disappeared. Mostly of wooden construction, the wood had carbonized and turned to ashes.

Bodies lay everywhere, some horribly mutilated by falling walls, girders and flying glass. There were outbreaks of fire in all directions, with loud explosions recurring as the flapping, live electric cables fused and flared.

The gas mains had also exploded, and those people still on their feet ran round in circles, hands pressed to their blinded eyes or holding the flesh that hung in tatters from their faces or arms.

The brick built guardroom had collapsed, and the dead guards lay almost naked. We could suddenly see right up the length of the valley, where previously the factories and buildings had formed a screen. Left behind was a crazy forest of discoloured corrugated sheets clinging to twisted girders.

Burst waterpipes shot fountains of water high in the air. The steel girders stood like stark sentinels, leaning over a series of concrete ‘tennis courts’ that had once been the floors of factories.

But most frightening of all was the lack of sunlight in contrast to the bright August sunshine that we had left a few minutes earlier, there was now a kind of twilight. We all genuinely thought, for some time, that this was the end of the world.

As I dashed through the shelter opening and scrambled onto the surface, my predominant thought was to get away as far and as fast as possible. I turned and ran. Others followed. The sea seemed to offer the most immediate prospect of safety, but as we ran towards it, we encountered another mob running towards us.

Everyone seemed to be looking for an intact bridge across the Urakami river. We were on the south side and to make our way to the sea and hills we needed to cross to the north bank. Unfortunately no bridge seemed to be available so I jumped into the cloudy waters and swam. Unwillingly the rest of the group joined me in the water.

On the opposite bank we stuck in the black glue-like mud and discovered that struggling only made matters worse. Eventually, muddy, smelly and exhausted, we got clear of the river and headed for the foothills to the north of the valley.

En route we were physically sickened by an endless stream of burnt, bleeding, flesh-torn, stumbling people, many unable to rise from where they had fallen. Others were still trapped under fallen debris. Occasionally someone had gone beserk.

The whole atmosphere was permeated with blind terror, and the macabre twilight was illuminated by numerous fires, the crackle of which mixed with the screams of the dying and injured. These sounded even more horrific because of the eerie overall ‘silence’.

Thousands of people scrambled, pushed, shoved and crawled across the shattered landscape in a crazed attempt to seek safety. At last we reached the foothills and the locals seemed quite pleased to see us, particularly when they discovered I was a doctor.

Immediately I set to work. Burns were the main problem and these were of two types – fire burns and flash burns. The locals used some native fern-like leaves to ease the pain-and this seemed to work. I was able to help by splinting and tying up broken bones.

Later that day the authorities began to set up first aid posts in caves which had been dug in the hillsides as air-raid shelters. Word soon spread amongst the wounded and injured and many were carried off on makeshift stretchers to these ‘hospital’ caves. Meanwhile, it began to rain. This helped to quell some of the fires.

The rain was black – which frightened everybody, including the Japanese. Not knowing until later anything at all about the effects of an atomic explosion, I seriously wondered whether we had finally arrived at Judgement Day.

An angry God was devastating the Japanese for their sins – and mistakenly including us in the holocaust.

Man first walked on the Moon 45 years ago today

"There was little sleep for the more than 3,000 news personnel at the Houston Space Center during those two historic days. Meals were hasty. Pressure was immense. Time flew," AP staffer Richard Beene wrote in a story about AP's coverage of the mission launch and moonwalk.

"Everyone was just so energized and high on the excitement of the event," Boccardi said this week from his home in suburban New York. "It took people a while to come down from the high of when (Neil Armstrong) said, 'One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.' When we heard those words it was just electric; we knew then that the mission had been successful."

"There we were, a few feet from Mission Control talking to the guys up in the capsule, about the time that man landed and walked on the moon," Boccardi recalled. "I was directing the finest news staff you could imagine assembling and we were constructing part of history."

July 20, 1969 astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin Jr.
walks on the surface of the moon

Forbes: "What Buzz Aldrin And Neil Armstrong Told Me About Parking On The Moon"

“Obviously, when we touched down, we were very relieved. Neil and I acknowledged that with a wink, a nod and a pat on the shoulder. The immediate surface was very powdery, as best we could see looking down from 15 feet. Off in the distance was a very clear horizon, maybe with a boulder. And, of course, the brightness of the sunlit surface was almost like looking out at sunlit snow. Your pupils close down, just as in orbit when the sun is on the spacecraft. The sky is black as can be, but there’s no way you can see stars. They’re there, of course, but you can’t make them out because they’re too faint with all the ambient light in your eyes.

Baby in the mirror... Man In The Translucent Material

The wonder of discovery...

***

Forbes: For someone who passed away half a decade ago, Michael Jackson seems very much alive. This year alone has seen the King of Pop continue a permanent show in Las Vegas (One, a collaboration between the singer’s estate and Cirque du Soleil), tour the world (via Immortal, another joint venture) and release a new album (Xscape).

Then, last month at the Billboard Music Awards, Jackson came to life in the form of a hologram-like illusion—and performed the song “Slave To The Rhythm” from his latest posthumous album as millions watched from home. The spectacle is still making waves due to continued discussion by viewers (as well as news of dueling multimillion-dollar lawsuits by rival illusion-making outfits over ownership of the technology employed to bring back Jackson).

KLEM FM

Dino Valenti of the Quicksilver Messenger Service wrote the song, but The Youngbloods made it famous in 1967.

I like the '60's era celebrity footage equally cut with "normal" people footage. I think I spied Sixty Grit with Carol_Herman.

Speaking of hippies, did you know that this summer marks the 50th anniversary of Ken Kesey's 1964 west-to-east Merry Pranksters road trip?

Batman premiered in 'Detective Comics' 75 years ago today

"Batman’s come a long way since that first appearance in issue #27 of Detective Comics, with a cover date of May of 1939. At that time, the Nazis hadn’t even marched into Poland to unleash World War II. Superhero comics consisted of only a small handful of other characters, the most significant of course being Superman, who made his own entry into pop culture history the previous year in the April-dated first issue of Action Comics. Batman borrowed a great deal from the tradition of the Shadow and Zorro, as well as a few of the early superhero characters like Superman and the Phantom. And there was some influence taken from the feature film The Bat Whispers, too."

"In those early years, Batman was dark and violent, carrying a gun and willing to kill criminals without a second thought. Even after his sidekick, Robin the Boy Wonder, was added to the mix a year later for additional appeal to younger readers, Batman stories remained darker in tone and full of plenty of violence and death. But after several more years, the youthful nature of readership coupled with a great deal of censorship and absurd public hysteria forced the publishers to tone down the violence and resort to increasingly silly plots aimed mostly at child readers."

Picture from a 75 Images Album

"I Am Overwhelmed by 55 Million Babies Killed Since Roe v. Wade"

"40 years ago today, seven men on the Supreme Court decided in favor of a case presented to them from a 27 year-old, unknown, post-abortive lawyer, Sarah Weddington. That case was Roe v. Wade and, along with its companion Doe v. Bolton, it legalized abortion in all 9 months of pregnancy, for any reason, in the United States."

Today, this 27 year-old is writing to you as a survivor of that decision. The undeniable fact is that nearly a third of my generation is missing. We are missing brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, husbands and wives.

You see, Miss Weddington’s generation got it wrong. In attempting to correct gender inequality in the workplace and in our society, they set into motion the ultimate act of discrimination – abortion. Instead of glorifying motherhood, they pitted the mother against her child, creating an endless cycle of selfishness, pain, and deceit.

But this generation is determined to set it right.

Let's end the slaughter. Let's give babies a chance.

Update: "Poll: 62% of Americans believe abortion is morally wrong"