Disaster Area

Dragging yourself into work on a Monday can always feel grim. But on June 18th, 1990, the employees at the GMAC office in Jacksonville, Florida, had something far more terrifying than boring meetings to look forward to that day.

By 1932, Ukrainians would see their lands taken to be turned into collective farms, their cupboards emptied, their valuables stolen, and anyone who complained shipped off to work camps. But from 1932 to 1933, Ukraine would experience the final results of having all of that taken away - a long torturous genocide by starvation.

It has been twenty years this month since the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center, but they weren't the first time the trade center found itself the target of a deadly terrorist attack.

There is always bound to be a first - the first person to climb Mount Everest, the first person to run a four-minute mile, the first woman to become president. But there are terrible firsts, and in this episode we discuss the first major tragedy of the American space race.

Videos:

• Apollo 1 Audio - January 27th, 1967

Articles and books:

• The Astronaut Wives Club, by Lily Koppel
• Apollo 13, by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger
• Deke, by Deke Slayton and Michael Cassutt
• Chasing the Moon, by Robert Stone and Alan Andres
• A Man on the Moon, by Andrew Chaikin
• Apollo 1: The Tragedy That Put Us On the Moon, by Ryan S. Walters
• Moonport: A History of Apollo Launch Facilities and Operations, by Charles D. Benson and William Faherty
• Chariots for Apollo: The NASA History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft to 1969, by Courtney Brooks, James Grimwood, and Loyd Swenson
• Apollo 1 report
• Apollo 1: The Fire
• Space Safety Magazine: The Apollo 1 Fire
• ‘We have a fire in the cockpit!’ The Apollo 1 disaster 50 years later
• American Institute of Physics: Trial by Fire: The Legacy of Apollo 1