Misfortunate Monday + Triumphant Tuesday: The Challenger Explosion and The Creation of the Internet

     Hello everybody and welcome to another edition of Nations Made Fun! I'll be your host, Mr. Nations, your guide to the wacky world of well... the world! Today I've decided to try something new today. I'm going to try something that I will dub as a "combination day." It will basically be that I will do a small paragraph or two on the two subjects I was supposed to do on that specific day. I will try it now. Let's get right into it!

     Misfortunate Monday:

     The Nasa space shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28th, 1986, just 73 seconds after liftoff, bringing an awful end to the spacecraft's tenth mission. The disaster ended the lives of all seven astronauts aboard, including Christa McAuliffe, a schoolteacher from New Hampshire that would have been the first civilian in space. 

      It was later discovered that two of the rubber O-Rings which had been designed to seal the sections of the rocket had failed because of the cold temperatures earlier in the morning. This then resulted in the boosters failing, eventually destroying the rocket a few minutes after liftoff. Because of the extensive media coverage of the disaster, NASA had to suspend all later space missions.

     Picture of the crew of the Challenger

       

     Sources: https://www.history.com/topics/1980s/challenger-disaster   

     Triumphant Tuesday:

     The internet. A device that almost a third of our international populations uses on a daily basis. A device this expansive obviously doesn't have a single creator, but many, It is hard to pin down one creator when several million people post on the internet every day. 

     The internet was created because of the Cold War. Scientists were worried that the Soviets might try to launch an attack on the U.S. and that they would start with the telephone system. Destroying the telephone system would cripple the U.S, as there would be no efficient way for leaders and politicians to communicate with one another without sending a letter.

     This became especially important when Russia launched the first satellite, Sputnik. It didn't do much. It mostly just tumbled around space aimlessly, sending radio blips back to earth. But Americans saw it as a sign of defeat in the Cold War.

     The internet is by far the most expansive thing that we can access on earth. It is basically the hub of information for the world. Without it, life really wouldn't be the same. Until tomorrow, Mr. Nations out!