F-YEAH HISTORY

Donald Crowhurst Donald Crowhurst (1932–1969) was a British businessman and amateur sailor who died while competing in the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, a single-handed, round-the-world yacht race. Crowhurst had entered the race in hopes of winning a cash prize from The Sunday Times to aid his failing business. Instead, he encountered difficulty early in the voyage, and secretly abandoned the race while reporting false positions, in an attempt to appear to complete a circumnavigation without actually circling the world. Evidence found after his disappearance indicates that this attempt ended in insanity and suicide.

Aftermath of a train incident involving the Brisbane Limited, Aberdeen, New South Wales, June 10th 1926 Credit to the National Library of Australia.

Two astronauts asleep on Challenger's middeck, August 9th 1983 'On Challenger's middeck, Commander Richard "Dick" Truly and Mission Specialist (MS) Guion Bluford sleep in front of forward lockers and port side wall. Truly sleeps with his head at the ceiling and his feet to the floor. Bluford, wearing sleep mask (blindfold), is oriented with the top of his head at the floor and his feet on the ceiling.'

Credit to the NASA Archives.

Launch of Apollo 11, 1969

Credit to NASA Archives. 

SS Kroonland sails in the Culebra Cut of the Panama Canal on 2 February 1915. Kroonland was the largest passenger ship to transit the canal to that date

Boeing 314 Clipper, with Mount Rainier in the background, ca. 1938

The Grand Staircase on the RMS Olympic, sister ship of the RMS Titanic

M.V. Britannic at Liverpool in the early 1930s M.V. Britannic was an ocean liner of the White Star Line, the company's third ship to bear the name. She was built by Harland & Wolff in Belfast. She was launched on 6 August 1929. Like her running mate MV Georgic, Britannic was a motorship powered by diesel engines. She measured 26,943 gross tons and was 712 feet (217 m) long. At the time of her launch she was the largest British-built motor liner. These two would be the only White Star motorships. Britannic was a popular passenger liner, as she represented what was then the latest in interior Art Deco decor and furnishings, as well as the "Motor Cabin Ship" style, which featured squat smokestacks and a sleek profile.

Aerial photograph of British destroyer HMS Highlander (H44) underway, 1942 HMS Highlander was an H-class destroyer that had originally been ordered by the Brazilian Navy with the name Jaguaribe in the late 1930s, but was bought by the Royal Navy after the beginning of World War II in September 1939 and later renamed. When completed in March 1940, she was assigned to the 9th Destroyer Flotilla of the Home Fleet. The ship was assigned to convoy escort duties in June with the Western Approaches Command, sinking one German submarine in October. Highlander was transferred to Freetown, Sierra Leone in mid-1941 to escort convoys off West Africa, but returned to the United Kingdom in August. She became flotilla leader of Escort Group B-4 of the Mid-Ocean Escort Force in early 1942 and continued to escort convoys in the North Atlantic for the rest of the war. The ship became a target ship after the war ended and was sold for scrap in mid-1946.

William H. Pickering, (centre) director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, presents a model of the Mariner spacecraft to President John F. Kennedy in 1961. NASA Administrator James E. Webb is standing directly behind the model The Mariner program was a program conducted by the American space agency NASA in conjunction with Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) that launched a series of robotic interplanetary probes designed to investigate Mars, Venus and Mercury from 1962 to 1973. The program included a number of firsts, including the first planetary flyby, the first pictures from another planet, the first planetary orbiter, and the first gravity assist maneuver.

Of the ten vehicles in the Mariner series, seven were successful and three were lost. The planned Mariner 11 and Mariner 12 vehicles evolved into Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 of the Voyager program, while the Viking 1 and Viking 2 Mars orbiters were enlarged versions of the Mariner 9 spacecraft. Other Mariner-based spacecraft, launched since Voyager, included the Magellan probe to Venus, and the Galileo probe to Jupiter. A second-generation Mariner spacecraft, called the Mariner Mark II series, eventually evolved into the Cassini–Huygens probe, now in orbit around Saturn.

SS Marine Sulphur Queen and an image of her remains recovered by the US coast guard SS Marine Sulphur Queen, T2 tanker ship converted to carrying molten sulphur, noted for its disappearance in 1963 near the southern coast of Florida, taking the lives of 39 crewmen.

In the investigation, the Coast Guard determined that the ship was unsafe and not seaworthy, and never should have sailed. The final report suggested four causes of the disaster, all due to poor design and maintenance of the ship. The loss of the ship was the subject of lengthy litigation between the owner and families of the missing men.

Despite the clear cause of the disaster, an inaccurate and incomplete version of the ship's disappearance is often used to justify Bermuda Triangle conspiracies.

Brazilian battleship Aquidabã Aquidabã, anglicised as Aquidaban, was a Brazilian ironclad warship built in the mid-1880s. The ship participated in two naval revolts; during the second she was sunk by a government torpedo boat. After being refloated, Aquidabã was sent to Germany for repairs and modernisation. During a routine cruise in 1906, the ship's ammunition magazines exploded, which caused the vessel to sink rapidly with a great loss of life.

HMS Gay Viking HMS Gay Viking was a Motor Gun Boat of the Royal Navy, serving with Coastal Forces during the Second World War. Gay Viking was one of eight vessels that were ordered by the Turkish Navy, but were taken over by the Royal Navy during the Second World War to serve as a flotilla of blockade runners. Designated as Gun Boat 506 but sailing under the name Gay Viking she operated out of Hull on two separate operations to the Scandinavian countries. She was one of the more successful of her group, but was lost in a collision while returning from one of these operations. Reports indicate that she may have been salvaged after this and gone on to sail for a considerable number of years as a civilian vessel.

Loss of HMS Ramillies by Robert Dodd HMS Ramillies was a 74-gun third rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 15 April 1763 at Chatham Dockyard.

In 1782 she was part of a fleet under Admiral Thomas Graves off Newfoundland. Ramillies was badly damaged in a violent storm, and was finally abandoned and burned on 21 September 1782.

Le Canard ("The Duck") photographed during its historic testing on March 28, 1910 The Fabre Hydravion was a French experimental floatplane designed by Henri Fabre, notable as the first seaplane in history to take off from water under its own power. Although called Canard (French: "duck"), this monoplane was not the origin of the term "canard configuration".

The A La Carte restaurant on B Deck of RMS Titanic, run as a concession by Italian-born chef Gaspare Gatti 

Photograph showing the near miss between the RMS Titanic and the New York, April 10 1912        While passing the New York, the hydrodynamic forces from Titanic's screws caused the New York to break her moorings and nearly collide.