1915 – RMS Lusitania Sunk: World War I German submarine U-20 sinks RMS Lusitania, out of the 2,000 passengers 1,199 were killed, including 128 Americans. Public reaction to the sinking turns many former pro-Germans in the United States against the German Empire. A luxury ocean liner is destroyed, a single torpedo fired by a German submarine struck the Lusitania off the coast of Ireland. Less than 20 minutes later, the ship sank. The Germans considered their attack justified, they had warned the Lusitania would be sunk, and it was carrying tons of Allied munitions. With 128 American citizens now dead and submarine warfare apparently without limits, public outrage in the United States ran high. Though the country would not enter World War I until 1917, the seeds of its involvement had been sown.
1992 – Space Shuttle Endeavour is launched on its first mission, STS-49. The STS-49, NASA’s inaugural flight of the Space Shuttle Endeavour, embarked on its journey on May 7, 1992. The mission’s primary objective was to retrieve the Intelsat VI satellite, Intelsat 603, which had failed to escape Low Earth orbit two years prior. The mission’s goal was to attach the satellite to a new upper stage and subsequently relaunch it to its designated geosynchronous orbit. After multiple attempts, the capture was successfully accomplished, marking the only three-person extravehicular activity (EVA) in spaceflight history. Notably, this EVA would remain the longest ever undertaken until STS-102 in 2001.
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