Remembering the lost astronauts

     NASA has a very nice site dedicated to the 17 astronauts who died in American space missions.  Click the picture above.  It's been 25 years since Christa McAuliffe died on Challenger.  I was a year out of college, doing my practice teaching at Londonderry (NH) Junior High School the day of the launch. 
     Here I was, a social studies teacher, like Christa.  Everyone here was so excited after hearing that a NH teacher would be the first teacher in space.  We all followed her training and were excited for her big day.  There were kids and adults watching it live in the school library; I was getting my lunch and had just entered the teachers lounge to an eerie quiet.  I don't know who said it but someone said "It blew up."  I was absolutely stunned.  I felt all my energy drain out of me.  I made my way to the library where a TV was set up and watched the news coverage.  Then I saw the replay.  It was the most horrible thing I ever saw -- I felt that I knew Christa.  We all did.  All the hopes and dreams her mission symbolized were gone in a flash.  Click this picture for the broadcast.

   That night, President Ronald Reagan gave a speech about the disaster from the White House.  It perfectly summed up how we felt.  Click his picture to see the broadcast.

1939 New York World's Fair

Not yet ten years from the collapse of the stock market and the beginning of the Great Depression, New York hosted a World's Fair to celebrate the American way of life and to present a hopeful future.  Click on the picture below to see a very interesting, short YouTube video.  Amazing.  Watch some of the suggested videos that YouTube has selected after the jump.

The president's speech in Arizona

If you want to watch President Obama's speech in Tucson, Arizona in the days after the shooting of Representative Gabby Giffords, click the photo to see the speech at the White House web site.

Reading the Constitution: solumn ritual or pointless nonsense?

The Washington Post ran a nice article about House Republicans and Democrats taking the time out of their schedules on the 112th Congress' second day to read the entire U.S. Constitution, Amendments and all.  I guess they left some parts out, though, like the mention of blacks being 3/5 of a person and that Prohibition thingy.

Read the article here.  There's another article from Fox News here.

Worthwhile or worthless?  Comment, please.