http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19980914&slug=2772018
Monday, September 14, 1998
Jean Godden
Benaroya's Opening A Stunner
By Jean Godden
Times Staff Columnist
The stars were all in their heavens - the few who weren't on stage or in plush concert seats - Saturday night for the inaugural concert at Benaroya Hall. And, for the first time in recent memory, no one wore jeans.
The new concert hall's inaugural day dawned, prophetic blue skies and sunshine, with a walk-through for out-of-town media and resident pencil pushers.
http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=2003_3673456
BOOK EXCERPT / `Who Was Ilan Ramon?' / Israel chose its best for NASA mission
MON 07/21/2003
Houston Chronicle
Editor's note: This is the second of three excerpts from Journey of Hope: The Story of Ilan Ramon, Israel's First Astronaut (Gefen Publishing, $10) by Alan D. Abbey. Look for Part 3 in Tuesday's Houston section.
ON April 29, 1997, the world knew that a veteran Israeli fighter pilot would join a NASA crew, but it hadn't learned his name. He was identified only as "Colonel A," a 42-year-old electrical engineer and F-16 pilot.
"Colonel A" had held both command and operational posts in the Israeli Air Force (IAF), including positions in weapons research and development; he had logged many combat missions and had bailed out of his plane at least once in his career. The air force said NASA still had to approve the selection before he was to be sent to the United States for training.
Some in the government were not sure they wanted to send a military pilot. "If it were up to us, we would have put out a tender opening the possibility to travel into space to others - scientists, researchers, engineers," a government spokesman said.
But the Israeli Air Force, which was to foot the bill for the pilot's training in the United States, made its preferences clear. The IAF wanted to send one of its pilots into space to mark the state's 50th anniversary in 1998. Ilan later said he was selected by the air force because the Israeli Space Agency believed the best person for Israel to send up first would be a military pilot, "exactly as the seven first astronauts out of the United States were."
More than a year later, Ilan's name was announced. The IAF never reveals the identities of its pilots, who are usually filmed from behind or with their helmets on.
But its hand was forced when NASA unveiled Ilan's name and that of his backup, Lt. Col. Yitzhak Mayo. Their mission, as originally described, was to test ways to eliminate disturbances in space that affected satellite photographs of the earth. The pair started astronaut training on June 6, 1998.
http://www.usswainwright.org/
USS Wainwright CG-28
On June 12th, 2002 the ex-USS Wainwright DLG/CG-28 was sunk after having been used as a live fire target.
http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=1988_536663
Underwater blast rocks Navy frigate in Persian Gulf
Houston Chronicle News Services
THU 04/14/1988
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
WASHINGTON - A U.S. Navy frigate on patrol in the Persian Gulf apparently struck an underwater mine today, the Pentagon said. Four sailors were injured.
The ship, the USS Samuel B. Roberts, was in no danger of sinking, said Pentagon spokesman Dan Howard. He said that no one was killed and that the four sailors had not sustained life-threatening injuries.
The ship is based in Newport, R.I.
"At approximately 10:10 this morning (9:10 a.m. Houston time), the USS Sam Roberts experienced an underwater explosion in the Persian Gulf at a point approximately 70 miles due east of Bahrain Bell (a navigational aid)," Howard said.
The ship is part of a force of 29 U.S. warships stationed in and near the gulf to protect U.S. shipping in the region and to escort 11 Kuwaiti tankers carrying American flags through the gulf.
The Roberts had completed escorting the 25th such Kuwait tanker convoy of the year on Wednesday and was moving through the gulf when the explosion occurred today, Howard said.
The spot is near Farsi Island, which the Iranian navy has used in its attacks on gulf shipping.
The explosion "caused flooding in the engine room and some hull damage. The flooding is under control, and the ship is in the process of pumping out the water. It's operating under auxiliary power."
Howard said that the USS Wainwright, a cruiser, "is en route to the site to offer assistance and should be there soon."
U.S. guided missile frigates such as the Roberts normally carry a crew of about 190 sailors and 13 officers.
The United States and several other Western countries moved minesweepers into the gulf last year after mines reportedly planted by Iran became a major problem in shipping lanes.
The Kuwaiti supertanker Bridgeton struck a mine last July in the first U.S.-escorted convoy after President Reagan agreed to protect re-flagged Kuwaiti tankers from attack by Iran, which accuses Kuwait of helping Iraq in the 8-year-old Iran-Iraq war.
No other Kuwaiti tankers or U.S. warships have been damaged by mines or direct attack since the escort operation began nine months ago.
Thirty-seven U.S. sailors were killed last May 17 when an Iraqi jet launched a missile attack against the U.S. frigate Stark. Iraq said that the attack was an accident, an explanation accepted by the United States.
[ International Terrorist against the U.S. federal government and Severely Treasonous agent of Communist China and the Soviet Union that is George Herbert Walker Bush & International Terrorist Organization against the U.S. federal government that is Microsoft-Corbis actively instigate insurrection and subversive activity against the U.S. federal government with all International Terrorist against the U.S. federal government and Severely Treasonous agent of Communist China and the Soviet Union that is George Herbert Walker Bush & International Terrorist Organization against the U.S. federal government that is Microsoft-Corbis partners employees lawyers managers of any capacity as severely treasonous political and criminal accomplices and that are active unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States that actively make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in the United States and in the Severely Treasonous and Criminally Rebellious State of Washington by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings ]
http://www.cswap.com/1991/Flight_of_the_Intruder/cap/en/2_Parts/b/00_37
Flight of the Intruder
:37:14
Virgil!
:37:51
Virgil.
:37:53
Come on.
:37:54
I know you didn't want
to lose another one, okay?
:37:58
Now, come on.
I didn't either.
:37:59
It hurts.
:38:01
Come on, we got to go.
