I found some new, strong, and eerie images while researching this, but I placed them after the jump out of respect.

Apollo I crew. Image www.universetoday.com

Apollo I astronauts Edward White, Virgil (Gus) Grissom, and Roger Chaffee horsing around during a photo shoot. Image www.de-la-terre-a-la-lune.com

Interior view of the Apollo 204 spacecraft after the fire, which killed astronauts Grissom, White and Chaffee during a plugs-out test at the Kennedy Space Center on January 27, 1967. Image Ed Hengeveld, www.apolloarchive.com.

"NASA combustion experts examine spacecraft outside late 3rd Feb 1967. Image posted by robsouth to www.collectspace.com

Photo showing internal fire damage. Image posted by robsouth to www.collectspace.com

The Apollo 1 Disaster
© Copyright 2003, Jim Loy

On January 27, 1967, on launch pad 34, Edward White, Virgil (Gus) Grissom, and Roger Chaffee (shown on the left) died in a fire, during a preflight test. Their mission had been designated Apollo 204. After the accident, it was renamed Apollo 1. There were no Apollo 2 and 3 missions. The next manned mission was Apollo 7. Numerous problems developed with oxygen and communications, and the test dragged on and on. Various communications methods went awry. Then five and a half hours after they had entered the command module, Chaffee said, “Fire, I smell fire.” Two seconds later, White shouted, “Fire in the cockpit.” A few seconds later, they were dead from smoke inhalation.

Numerous things contributed to the disaster.

The test was performed in a pure oxygen atmosphere at nearly full atmospheric pressure. While this is considered hazardous, it had been done on all flights since the beginning of the Mercury program, as far as I can tell. After the accident, air was used while on the ground, and pure oxygen at reduced pressure was used once the spacecraft gained high altitude.

Image collectspace.com

Image collectspace.com

There were many flammable objects within the command module. Some substances are mildly flammable in air, but are much more flammable in pure oxygen under those conditions.

There was evidence of several electrical arcs, with no single identifiable cause. There was no evidence of sabotage.

The hatches could not be opened from either side, because of the pressure of the hot gasses inside the command module, which soon ruptured. The hatches were subsequently redesigned.

Emergency evacuation was very complicated, and had never been done in a little as 90 seconds. Rescue efforts were unsuccessful. 27 men were treated for smoke inhalation, two were hospitalized.

after the fireOn the right is the view into the main hatch, after the bodies had been removed. The astronauts were aware that they had a dangerous job, but they probably did not imagine dying during a test on the launch pad.

Booie, the 44-year-old chimp, lived at the Wildlife WayStation from 1955, after being retired from a research lab. Image Daily Mail.

Bye Bye Booie! California’s smoking chimpanzee who learned sign language dies at 44
12/11/11 | http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Bye Bye Booie! California’s smoking chimpanzee who learned sign language dies at 44

Heart condition: Booie, the 44-year-old chimp, lived at the Wildlife WayStation from 1955, after being retired from a research lab

A chimpanzee that kicked a smoking habit and used sign language to beg for candy has died at a California animal refuge.

Martine Colette, founder of the Wildlife WayStation, said Booie was being treated for a heart condition when he died on Saturday, at the age of 44.

The chimp had been living at the animal sanctuary near Los Angeles since 1995, after he retired from a research lab.

Ms Colette said she successfully turned Booie away from his smoking habit but could not make a dent in his love of sweets.

She said he would use his signing skills to panhandle for candy by signing: ‘Booie see sweet in pocket.’

Booie’s death is a serious blow to the financially troubled refuge because he was one of its best fundraisers.

Ms Colette said he had fans around the world because of his TV appearances.

Chimpanzees rarely live beyond 40 in the wild but have been known to live more than 60 years in captivity.

It has not been established whether Booie’s smoking habit contributed to his death.

Booie was eight years younger than Charlie, another chimpanzee famous for his smoking, who died in South Africa last year at the age of 52.

Charlie lived at Bloemfontein Zoo and first started his smoking habit after visitors began throwing lit cigarettes into his enclosure.

Zoo spokesman Qondile Khedama insisted Charlie was only an ‘occasional smoker’, but had none the less become famous around the world.

Assembly Minority Leader Alex DeCroce (R-Morris) gestures as he speaks with Assemblyman Jay Webber (R-Morris) (back to camera) as the Assembly session begins at the Statehouse in this 2009 file photo. DeCroce died Monday night at 75. Image TONY KURDZUK/THE STAR-LEDGER

Morris County mourns the loss of Assembly Minority Leader Alex DeCroce
By Star-Ledger Staff | By Star-Ledger Staff January 10, 2012 | http://www.nj.com

MORRISTOWN — This morning colleagues and constituents across the state mourned the passing of Assemblyman Alex DeCroce who collapsed and died inside the Statehouse late Monday night.

DeCroce, 75, was the longest serving current assemblyman in the state and the leading Republican of the state’s lower house. He represented Morris County for 23 years and died just moments after the 214th Legislature held its final voting session.

In a statement released early this morning, Gov. Chris Christie remembered DeCroce as “one of the most kind, considerate and trustworthy people I have ever had the pleasure to know,” Christie said. “He was an enormously accomplished legislator and a tremendous servant to the people of New Jersey.”

Politicians reacted to the news on twitter sending their condolences to the late-Assemblyman’s wife and three children. Sen. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Union) said in a statement posted on the website, “Alex was a true leader for the Republican caucus in the Assembly, and was loved and respected by legislators of both chambers, on both sides of the aisle….It is hard to believe we will start a new legislative session without his wit, charm, and energy.”

Constituents also mourned the assemblyman’s passing. Morris County resident Rich Pompelio met DeCroce 20 years ago when the two started working together on victim’s rights laws after Pompelio’s son was stabbed to death in 1989.

“He stepped forward kind of out of the blue after my son was murdered and he never left,” said Pompelio who founded the New Jersey Crime Victim’s Law Center. “Together we introduced the victims rights amendment and he went on to become the leader of victim’s rights in the state. He was a sweet man, one of the best I’ve ever known.”

Monday Pompelio voted on a new crime victims bill of rights, which was approved in the senate.

Patrons and staff members interviewed this morning at the Morristown Diner had only fond memories of DeCroce who lived in Parsippany.

DeCroce had been an active member; of the Morris County branch of the NAACP for many years and members of the branch’s executive committee talked about him at their annual planning meeting last night before learning he had died, said Minister Wesley Marrow.

“We spoke about his contributions and his legacy just last night,” said Marrow, pastor at the Morristown Church of Christ. Marrow recalled that the Republican leader was involved in the branch’s “legal redress” work and also attended the chapter’s annual picnic last summer

“He was a very nice guy. He’s done a lot for Morris County residents,” Marrow said. “It’s always sad when you lose somebody who serves the people more than they serve themselves.”

Lorena Inestroza of Morristown, a waitress at the diner, said DeCroce was “very instrumental to Morris County.”

“I never heard anybody say anything bad about him,” Inestroza said. “People trusted him and were confident in him.”

“I lost a good friend,” Assemblyman Anthony Bucco Jr. said. “We have a giant void in leadership as a result of his passing.”

“One of the hardest working assemblymen I knew,” he said.

A sign on the door of the Whippany office of Assembly Alex DeCroce, which he shared with Assembly Jay Webber, informs visitors that it is closed. And the County College of Morris lowered flags to half-staff this morning, after hearing of DeCroce’s death.

DeCroce was on the board of trustees at the college from 1971-72 and 1973-82. He was chairman of the board from 1977-81, said college President Edward Yaw who has known DeCroce for more than 30 years.

“We lost a terrific man,” Yaw said. “He was a prince. We would have lunch from time to time and he was always very affable, very sincere and very committed to what he did and to the people of Morris County.”

Yaw said as board member and president, DeCroce was concerned about economically less privileged students and always a stickler when it came to building maintenance and fiscal responsibilities.

Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-NJ) said his son, Bill Pascrell III, passed DeCroce around 11 p.m. in a statehouse hallway. The two exchanged pleasantries and Pascrell III told his father the assemblyman appeared to be fine.

State Police Lt. Stephen Jones said the legislator died shortly before 11:30 p.m. in a first-floor restroom of the Statehouse. He said a physician on hand attended to the legislator but that he was found to be dead. Lawmakers said Assemblyman Herb Conaway (D-Burlington), the Legislature’s only doctor, was the one who attended to DeCroce.

Legislative sources early this morning said Christie will not deliver his anticipated State of the State address, which had been scheduled for 3 p.m. today. Instead, they said, the governor expects to meet his constitutional requirement to address the Legislature with a brief talk that may eulogize DeCroce.

Spokesmen for Senate and Assembly Democrats said the state will hold an informal swearing-in for new lawmakers and a reorganization of party leadership at noon at the Statehouse.

DeCroce was born in Morristown in 1936 and graduated from Boonton High School before attending Seton Hall. DeCroce was selected to fill a vacancy and sworn in to his Assembly seat 1989. He was elected to his first full term in November of that year and was the state’s longest serving member of the Assembly.

DeCroce attended Seton Hall University and worked as a realtor for ERA Gallo & DeCroce, his legislative biography said. Among the committees he was recently serving on were the Bipartisan Leadership Committee, where he served as the co-chairman, and the Legislative Services Commission. He is survived by his wife Mary Lou, the deputy commissioner of the Department of Community Affairs, three adult children and two grandchildren.

DeCroce was a Morris County freeholder from 1984 to 1989 and served on both the Morris County Tax Board and Board of Elections, according to his legislative biography. He was also the chairman of the County College of Morris Board of Trustees.

You’re expelled from your mother’s uterus as if shot from a cannon towards a barn door studded with old nail files and rusty hooks. Its a matter of how you use the intervening time in an interesting and ironic way, and try to not do anything nasty to your fellow creatures.
-hitchens

Advertising executive sends Christmas greetings from the grave
By Tom Fontaine  |  PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW  |  December 9, 2011

Known for sending humorous Christmas cards each year to hundreds of friends, Bob McCully outdid himself this year — posthumously.

Last week, about 400 people received unexpected holiday greetings from McCully, a former advertising executive and satirical writer from Point Breeze who died in August at 88.

“Hello, please don’t call. I recently moved to a quiet neighborhood and …,” the front of the card read, the words appearing under a photo of McCully in an office talking on the phone.

The message concluded inside: “My new place doesn’t have a phone and our gates close after dark.”

Photos of the gates at Allegheny Cemetery in Lawrenceville and the tombstone McCully shares with his wife, Barbara Clark McCully, appear nearby.

“It was the strangest feeling getting that card. It was almost eerie. But when I opened it, I laughed out loud. It was the ultimate Christmas card,” said David Newell, a longtime friend of McCully’s.

McCully — Ketchum Inc.’s former director of communications and advertising who wrote and often performed locally in satirical musical revues — sent out hundreds of a humorous Christmas card every year. Each had a different theme. For several years, Newell said, cards were written from the perspective of McCully’s former dog, Rolf.

“It was dark humor, but it was very funny,” Newell said of the latest card. “It had a certain whimsy that took the darkness away. Bob certainly got the last laugh.”

Friends said McCully’s stepson Michael Clark, who could not be reached, helped produce the card.

Noted local jazz guitarist Joe Negri said some friends found the card “a bit macabre, (but) hey, there are no boundaries when it comes to humor.”

“I was delighted to no end. It was a great source of joy for me,” said Ed Blank, former Pittsburgh Press and Pittsburgh Tribune-Review film critic. “It was like nothing I’ve ever received.”

Todd Maisel/New York Daily News Donna Fountain, 38, a home health attendant and single mom, was killed by a hit and run driver on Eastern Parkway and Troy Avenue Christmas morning, leaving behind her only son, Eliajah, 8. This is her photo from her ID.

Donna Fountain, 38, a home health attendant and single mom, was killed by a hit-and-run driver on Eastern Parkway and Troy Ave. on Christmas morning. A note she left behind lists her dreams.

Brooklyn woman killed in Christmas hit and run died with pocketful of dreams
Donna Fountain leaves behind 8-year-old son
BY Helen Kennedy & Kevin Deutsch  |  NEW YORK DAILY NEWS  |  December 27 2011, 6:00 AM

Updated: Tuesday, December 27 2011, 6:00 AM

Donna Fountain carried her list with her everywhere, five items written out in pencil headed simply “My Dreams.”

Her goals: find a great job, buy a house by age 45, start a sanctuary for gay and lesbian teens, marry the woman of her dreams and watch her son, Elijah, graduate from college.

Donna Fountain will never see any of her dreams come true.

At just 38, she was cut down on Christmas morning by a hit-and-run driver in Crown Heights as she headed out to work as a home health care aide.

A single mom, she left behind her bereft 8-year-old son.

Cops found the sad crumpled list of Fountain’s dreams at the scene of the accident and passed it to her neighbor.

“She gave everything she had to her son and worked so hard for him,” said her friend Dena Baveghems, 28.

“She was all about making her dreams come true. Nothing could have stopped her except this.”

Cops say Fountain was run down by a gray car around 7:30 a.m. as she crossed Eastern Parkway near Troy Avenue.

The car sped away, leaving the hardworking mom dying on the pavement two and a half blocks from home, where unopened Christmas presents sat and awaited her excited son.

Her brother, Ben Fountain, said investigators have been reviewing traffic camera footage and told him they are hopeful they can track the driver.

“They are 98% certain they can catch who did this,” he said.

“They took it upon themselves to take a life. How could they not stop?” he asked, his voice choked with emotion.

Donna Fountain, who worked for Partners in Care, shared a small apartment with her son.

She planned to work her early Christmas shift and come home to open presents with Elijah, who stayed with a sitter while she worked.

“She talked about saving up to buy his gifts. She was looking forward to being with him on Christmas,” Baveghems said.

“He was so excited. I don’t know how he’ll go on without his mom. They were incredibly close. She’s all he knows,” she said.

“I know it wasn’t easy for Donna. She made the best life possible for him.”

The timing of the tragedy was especially harsh, she said.

“I’m devastated for him. To lose the person who took care of him on Christmas is the worst thing I can imagine,” she said.

The boy will be taken in by relatives.

Ben Fountain called his sister “an exceptional woman” who was working hard to make a bright future for herself and her boy.

“She did it all on her own. She built herself up,” he said.

“She believed in herself. She had the normal problems any single parent has, but she persevered and fought for her dreams.”

The late James Van Doren.

Vintage Vans ad. Image thestyleraconteur.com

Sean Penn as Jeff Spicoli in the movie Fast Times at Ridgemnont High, shown with the Vans his character wore.

A 1984 file photo of Vans tennis shoes displayed in the Van Doren Rubber Company plant in Orange, California. James Van Doren, who ran the innovative shoe company from 1976 to 1984, died October 12, 2011. (Los Angeles Times/MCT)

James Van Doren dies at 72; co-founder of Vans shoes
November 03, 2011  |  By Valerie J. Nelson,  |  Los Angeles Times

Van Doren Rubber Co. owed some of its success to Southern California’s burgeoning skateboard culture and gained national recognition when Sean Penn wore Vans in ‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

James Van Doren and his older brother Paul had only sample sneakers to offer when they opened their first store, in Anaheim, in 1966. They took a dozen orders in the morning and delivered custom canvas deck shoes, made in their adjacent factory, in the afternoon.

Operating as the Van Doren Rubber Co., the brothers and two other co-founders planned to succeed by cutting out the middleman and selling their distinctive thick rubber-soled shoes directly to the public.

By the early 1970s, the company owed some of its success to Southern California’s burgeoning skateboard culture. The shoes were especially valued for the sticky rubber soles that helped skaters grip their boards — an innovation devised by Van Doren

From the start, the casual shoes were known by a single name: Vans.

James Van Doren, who ran the company from 1976 to 1984, died Oct. 12 at his home in Fullerton after a long illness, said his wife, Char. He was 72.

“He was a mechanic, a chemist, the brains behind the early shoe,” said his nephew, Steve Van Doren, one of several family members who still work for the company. “In his garage, he made all the molds for the very first soles,” including the trademark waffle design.

With James at the helm, Vans built up its manufacturing operation, doubled its workforce and greatly expanded its product line far beyond the initial deck shoes into the competitive athletic shoe market. To test running shoes, he became a serious runner and raced in half-marathons.

The brand gained national recognition when Sean Penn donned a pair of checkerboard slip-on Vans to play the spaced-out Spicoli in the 1982 film “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”

“He guided Vans through the checkerboard era, and we were flying,” said Steve Van Doren, son of company co-founder Paul. “We were the hottest thing going.”

While trying to absorb expansion costs, Vans was squeezed by dwindling sales in the early 1980s as the “Ridgemont High” fad faded and cheaper foreign imitations hit the market.

“We had kind of gotten away from our sweet spot and off track into athletic shoes that were expensive to make in America,” Steve said, when the competition made them overseas.

Heavy losses sent the company into bankruptcy, which forced a court-ordered management shake-up. In 1984, James left Vans and returned control to Paul, who came out of semi-retirement to run the firm, then based in Orange. Four years later, an investment banking company bought Vans, which has been sold several times since.

Only 45 years old when he was ousted, Van Doren became a general contractor who often worked for free for people who couldn’t afford to pay, said James Van Doren Jr., one of his three sons.

Born March 20, 1939, in Weymouth, Mass., the senior James was one of five children of Johnson and Rena Van Doren. His father was an inventor and his mother a seamstress.

James spent two years at Northeastern University in Boston and a decade with the Randolph Rubber Manufacturing Co. in Massachusetts, working his way up to factory manager.

The two Van Doren brothers moved west in 1964 to run a Randolph factory in Garden Grove and left the company the next year to start their own firm.

“He was a very driven man, a hard worker, very giving, very funny,” his son James said. “He could control a room with his stories.”

In addition to Char, his wife of 15 years, Van Doren is survived by his sons from a previous marriage, James, Mark and Eric; brothers Paul and Robert; sister Bernice; and five grandchildren.

A memorial Mass will be held at 10 a.m. Friday at St. Juliana Falconieri Church, 1316 N. Acacia Ave., Fullerton.