The LuLac Edition #5, 556, January 27th, 2026

 

NOTABLE 

ANNIVERSARIES

INTERNATIONAL

HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY

On November 1, 2005, the UN General Assembly adopted resolution 60/7 to designate January 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day (IHRD). The date marks the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and is meant to honor the victims of Nazism. The same resolution supports the development of educational programs to remember the Holocaust and to prevent further genocide.

Resolution 60/7 not only establishes January 27 as “International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust,” it also rejects any form of Holocaust denial. The resolution encourages member states of the UN to actively preserve sites that the Nazis used during the "Final Solution"  (for example, killing centers, concentration camps, and prisons.) Drawing from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the resolution condemns all forms of “religious intolerance, incitement, harassment or violence against persons or communities based on ethnic origin or religious belief” throughout the world.

You would think that such a horrific day would not need a reminder. But unfortunately that is not the case. The holocaust denier lie has to be stopped in its tracks.

The Holocaust is one of the best documented events in history. “Holocaust denial” describes attempts to negate the established facts of the Nazi genocide of European Jewry. Common denial assertions are that the murder of six million Jews during World War II never occurred; that the Nazis had no official policy or intention to exterminate the Jews; and that the poison gas chambers in the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center never existed.

A newer trend is the distortion of the facts of the Holocaust. Common distortions include assertions that the figure of six million Jewish deaths is an exaggeration; that deaths in the concentration camps were the results of disease or starvation but not policy; and that the diary of Anne Frank is a forgery.

Holocaust denial is generally motivated by hatred of Jews, and builds on an accusation that the Holocaust was invented or exaggerated by Jews as part of a plot to advance Jewish interests. This view perpetuates long-standing antisemitic stereotypes by accusing Jews of conspiracy and world domination, hateful charges that were instrumental in laying the groundwork for the Holocaust.

Holocaust distortion may be associated with antisemitism, but there are also forms that may result from a lack of respect or awareness of the subject. Regardless of the motivation, all forms of Holocaust distortion open the door to more dangerous forms of denial and antisemitism because they cast doubt on the reality of the Holocaust.

The United States Constitution ensures freedom of speech. Therefore, in the United States denying the Holocaust or engaging in antisemitic hate speech is not illegal, except when there is an imminent threat of violence. Many other countries, particularly in Europe where the Holocaust occurred, have laws criminalizing Holocaust denial and hate speech. (LuLac, Holocaust Museum, wikipedia.)  

 

APOLLO ONE

It was a Friday night on a cold January night in 1967. Shortly before 11pm ABC News broke in with a bulletin that stunned the nation. Until that night, the American Space program had a strig of successful launches with no casualties.

That changed that Friday night.

Apollo 1, initially designated AS-204, was planned to be the first crewed mission of the Apollo program,[1] the American undertaking to land the first man on the Moon. It was planned to launch on February 21, 1967, as the first low Earth orbital test of the Apollo command and service module. However, the mission never flew; a cabin fire during a launch rehearsal test at Cape Kennedy Air Force Station Launch Complex 34 on January 27, 1967 killed all three crew members—Command Pilot Gus Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White, and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee—and destroyed the command module (CM). The name Apollo 1, chosen by the crew, was made official by NASA in their honor after the fire.

Immediately after the fire, NASA convened an Accident Review Board to determine the cause of the fire, and both chambers of the United States Congress conducted their own committee inquiries to oversee NASA's investigation.

During the Congressional investigation, Senator Walter Mondale publicly revealed a NASA internal document citing problems with prime Apollo contractor North American Aviation, which became known as the Phillips Report. This disclosure embarrassed NASA Administrator James E. Webb, who was unaware of the document's existence, and attracted controversy to the Apollo program. Despite congressional displeasure at NASA's lack of openness, both congressional committees ruled that the issues raised in the report had no bearing on the accident.

On that day, there was a test rehearsal. The launch simulation on January 27, 1967, on pad 34, was a "plugs-out" test to determine whether the spacecraft would operate nominally on (simulated) internal power while detached from all cables and umbilicals. Passing this test was essential to making the February 21 launch date. The test was considered non-hazardous because neither the launch vehicle nor the spacecraft was loaded with fuel or cryogenics and all pyrotechnic systems (explosive bolts) were disabled

At 1:00 pm EST (18:00 GMT) on January 27, first Grissom, then Chaffee, and White entered the command module fully pressure-suited, and were strapped into their seats and hooked up to the spacecraft's oxygen and communication systems. Grissom immediately noticed a strange odor in the air circulating through his suit which he compared to "sour buttermilk", and the simulated countdown was put on hold at 1:20 pm, while air samples were taken. No cause of the odor could be found, and the countdown was resumed at 2:42 pm. The accident investigation found this odor not to be related to the fire.

The simulated countdown was put on hold again at 5:40 pm while attempts were made to troubleshoot the communications problem. All countdown functions up to the simulated internal power transfer had been successfully completed by 6:20 pm, and at 6:30 the count remained on hold at T minus 10 minutes.

The fire

Command module exterior, blackened from the eruption of fire

Duration: 2 minutes and 55 seconds.2:55

Audio recording from the ground loop, starting from Grissom's "talk between buildings" remark. The first mention of fire is heard at 1:05.

The crew members were using the time to run through their checklist again, when a momentary increase in AC Bus 2 voltage occurred. Nine seconds later (at 6:31:04.7), one of the astronauts (some listeners and laboratory analysis indicate Grissom) exclaimed "Hey!", "Fire!",[17]: 5–8  or "Flame!";[23] this was followed by two seconds of scuffling sounds through Grissom's open microphone. This was immediately followed at 6:31:06.2 (23:31:06.2 GMT) by someone (believed by most listeners, and supported by laboratory analysis, to be Chaffee) saying, "[I've, or We've] got a fire in the cockpit." After 6.8 seconds of silence, a second, badly garbled transmission was heard by various listeners (who believed this transmission was made by Chaffee[17]: 5–9 ) as:

"They're fighting a bad fire—Let's get out ... Open 'er up",

"We've got a bad fire—Let's get out ... We're burning up", or

"I'm reporting a bad fire ... I'm getting out ..."

The transmission lasted 5.0 seconds and ended with a cry of pain.

Some blockhouse witnesses said that they saw White on the television monitors, reaching for the inner hatch release handle as flames in the cabin spread from left to right.

The heat of the fire fed by pure oxygen caused the pressure to rise to 29 psi (200 kPa), which ruptured the command module's inner wall at 6:31:19 (23:31:19 GMT, initial phase of the fire). Flames and gases then rushed outside the command module through open access panels to two levels of the pad service structure. The intense heat, dense smoke, and ineffective gas masks designed for toxic fumes rather than smoke, hampered the ground crew's attempts to rescue the men. There were fears the command module had exploded, or soon would, and that the fire might ignite the solid fuel rocket in the launch escape tower above the command module, which would have likely killed nearby ground personnel, and possibly have destroyed the pad.

As the pressure was released by the cabin rupture, the rush of gases within the module caused flames to spread across the cabin, beginning the second phase. The third phase began when most of the oxygen was consumed and was replaced with atmospheric air, essentially quenching the fire, but causing high concentrations of carbon monoxide and heavy smoke to fill the cabin, and large amounts of soot to be deposited on surfaces as they cooled.

It took five minutes for the pad workers to open all three hatch layers, and they could not drop the inner hatch to the cabin floor as intended, so they pushed it out of the way to one side. Although the cabin lights remained on, they were unable to see the astronauts through the dense smoke. As the smoke cleared they found the bodies, but were not able to remove them. The fire had partly melted Grissom's and White's nylon space suits and the hoses connecting them to the life support system. Grissom had removed his restraints and was lying on the floor of the spacecraft. White's restraints were burned through, and he was found lying sideways just below the hatch. It was determined that he had tried to open the hatch per the emergency procedure, but was not able to do so against the internal pressure. Chaffee was found strapped into his right-hand seat, as procedure called for him to maintain communication until White opened the hatch. Because of the large strands of melted nylon fusing the astronauts to the cabin interior, removing the bodies took nearly 90 minutes. The bodies were only able to be removed after 7.5 hours from the time the incident took place, due to the gases and toxins present which prevented medical personnel from entering initially.

Deke Slayton was possibly the first NASA official to examine the spacecraft's interior.His testimony contradicted the official report concerning the position of Grissom's body. Slayton said of Grissom and White's bodies, "it is very difficult for me to determine the exact relationships of these two bodies. They were sort of jumbled together, and I couldn't really tell which head even belonged to which body at that point. I guess the only thing that was real obvious is that both bodies were at the lower edge of the hatch. They were not in the seats. They were almost completely clear of the seat areas.

The autopsy report determined that the primary cause of death for all three astronauts was cardiac arrest caused by high concentrations of carbon monoxide. Asphyxiation occurred after the fire melted the astronauts' suits and oxygen tubes, exposing them to the lethal atmosphere of the cabin.[17]: 6-1 

 According to the Board, Grissom suffered severe third-degree burns on more than one-third of his body and his spacesuit was almost completely destroyed. White suffered third-degree burns on almost half of his body and a quarter of his spacesuit had melted away. Chaffee suffered third-degree burns on almost a quarter of his body and a small portion of his spacesuit was damaged. Burns suffered by the crew were not believed to be major factors, and it was concluded that most of them had occurred postmortem.

Major causes of accident

The review board identified several major factors which combined to cause the fire and the astronauts' deaths:

An ignition source most probably related to "vulnerable wiring carrying spacecraft power" and "vulnerable plumbing carrying a combustible and corrosive coolant"

A pure oxygen atmosphere at higher than atmospheric pressure

A cabin sealed with a hatch cover which could not be quickly removed at high pressure

An extensive distribution of combustible materials in the cabin

Inadequate emergency preparedness (rescue or medical assistance, and crew escape). (NASA, ABC News)