“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone—we find it with another.”—Fr. Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton was born on this date in 1915.

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Franz Schubert (at top) was born on this date in 1797. Only 31 when he died, he left behind almost 1000 works—several hundred songs, some individual and some in song cycles; seven officially complete symphonies and five other partial symphonies (one of which, Symphony No. 8 in B minor, the Unfinished, is one of the most performed works in most orchestra’s repertoires); and many chamber works.
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“Men are not bad. Men are degraded largely by circumstances …. It is the duty of every man … to help them up and let them feel that there is some hope for them in life.”—Louis Brandeis

President Woodrow Wilson nominated Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court of the United States on this date in 1916.

At the time, most presidential nominations were accepted and voted on by the United States Senate in an up-or-down vote, often on the same day that the president submitted the name; the nomination of Brandeis was so controversial that the Senate held public hearings about it.
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“We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of Earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.'”—U.S. President Ronald Reagan

Despite warnings from flight engineers that cold weather and ice should have led to a delay in the launch, a decision was made by NASA executives to launch the Space Shuttle Challenger thirty one years ago today.

Seventy-three seconds after lift-off, Challenger broke apart after its right-side solid rocket booster (SRB) sprung a fuel leak (caused in part by the cold weather and ice) which melted a steel brace that held it in place, which allowed the SRB to swing wildly and slam into the large central fuel tank which was still mostly full of fuel.
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