Today in History, January 28th
On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart after launch. Plus Pride and Prejudice and the birth of the Coast Guard.
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January 28 is best known for the 1986 loss of the space shuttle Challenger, which broke apart 73 seconds after launch with seven astronauts aboard, including teacher Christa McAuliffe. The date also saw Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice published in 1813 and the U.S. Coast Guard created in 1915.
The big story: The Challenger Disaster (1986)
Millions of schoolchildren were watching because one of the crew was a teacher. Christa McAuliffe, a high school teacher from Concord, New Hampshire, had won a national contest to fly on mission 51-L and planned to teach lessons from orbit. After several delays, Challenger lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 11:38 a.m. on a bitterly cold January 28, 1986. Seventy-three seconds later, it broke apart about 46,000 feet up, killing all seven aboard: Dick Scobee, Michael Smith, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Gregory Jarvis and McAuliffe. The cause turned out to be small. The cold had stiffened rubber O-rings in a joint of the right solid rocket booster, and hot gas leaked out and set off the external fuel tank. The Rogers Commission faulted NASA and contractor Morton Thiokol for poor engineering and management. The shuttle fleet stayed grounded until 1988.
More events on January 28
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 814 | Charlemagne, king of the Franks and emperor in the West, died at Aachen, in what is now Germany. |
| 1547 | Henry VIII of England, the king of six marriages and the break with Rome, died in London at 55 (Old Style). |
| 1813 | Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was published by Thomas Egerton, without her name on it. |
| 1855 | The first train ran the full length of the Panama Railroad, linking the Atlantic and the Pacific across the isthmus. |
| 1878 | The world’s first commercial telephone exchange opened in a New Haven, Connecticut, storefront with 21 subscribers. |
| 1915 | President Woodrow Wilson signed the law that merged the Revenue Cutter Service and the Life-Saving Service into the U.S. Coast Guard. |
| 1958 | The LEGO company filed its patent for the plastic interlocking brick, the design still used in the toy. |
| 1985 | Dozens of pop stars gathered in Los Angeles to record the famine-relief single “We Are the World.” |
| 2020 | President Donald Trump unveiled a Middle East peace plan at the White House alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Palestinian leaders rejected it. |
| 2021 | Robinhood and other brokerages stopped customers from buying GameStop and other stocks pushed up by Reddit traders, setting off a public uproar. |
Born on January 28
- 1841: Henry Morton Stanley, Welsh-born journalist and explorer who found David Livingstone in Africa.
- 1853: José Martí, Cuban poet and essayist who became the symbol of Cuba’s fight for independence.
- 1912: Jackson Pollock, Abstract Expressionist painter famous for his drip paintings.
- 1936: Alan Alda, actor, director and writer best known as Hawkeye Pierce on M*A*S*H.
Keep reading
Sources
- Challenger disaster, Britannica
- Charlemagne, Britannica
- Henry VIII, Britannica
- First reading of Pride & Prejudice in 1813, Jane Austen’s House
- History, Panama Canal Railway Company
- Site of the First Telephone Exchange, National Park Service
- From near extinction to rebirth: Coast Guard’s first reorganization, U.S. Coast Guard
- Happy Patent Day, LEGO
- This Day in History: January 28, History.com
- Trump unveils Middle East plan: All the latest updates, Al Jazeera
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