Kennedy Space Center
On February 1, 2003, "Columbia" and her crew of seven were lost during re-entry over Texas during the STS-107 mission (the 113th shuttle flight); a vehicle breakup triggered by damage sustained during launch from Pad 39A on January 16, when a piece of foam insulation from the orbiter's external fuel tank struck the orbiter's left wing. During reentry, the damage created a hole allowing hot gases to melt the wing structure. Like the "Challenger" disaster, the resulting investigation and modifications interrupted shuttle flight operations at KSC for more than two years until the STS-114 launch on July 26, 2005.
Charles Sumner
Sumner's radical theory of Reconstruction proposed that nothing beyond the confines of the Constitution restricted the Congress in determining how to treat the eleven defeated states, but that even that document had to be read in light of the Declaration of Independence, which he saw as an essential part of fundamental law. Not going as far as Thaddeus Stevens in seeing the seceded states as "conquered provinces," he nonetheless argued that by declaring secession, they had committed "felo de se" ("state suicide") and could now be turned into territories that should be prepared for statehood, under conditions set by the national government. He objected to Lincoln's and later Andrew Johnson's more lenient Reconstruction policies as ungenerous to the former slaves, inadequate in their guarantees of equal rights, and an encroachment upon the powers of Congress. When Andrew Johnson was impeached, Sumner voted for conviction. He was only sorry that he had to vote on each article of impeachment, for as he said, he would have rather voted, "Guilty of all, and infinitely more."