{"id":4958,"date":"2014-05-30T21:20:05","date_gmt":"2014-05-31T02:20:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=4958"},"modified":"2014-05-30T21:20:05","modified_gmt":"2014-05-31T02:20:05","slug":"morbid-fact-du-jour-for-may-30-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=4958","title":{"rendered":"Morbid Fact Du Jour for May 30, 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Today&#8217;s First Yet Truly Morbid Fact!<\/span><\/strong><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><br \/>\nTed Freeman achieved unwelcome distinction on October 31, 1964, when he\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\">became the first fatality of the United States Astronaut Corps. That\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\">morning, Freeman, a test pilot and one of the third group of pilots selected\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\">for astronaut training by NASA, was returning to Ellington Air Force Base\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\">near Houston from McDonnell Douglas training facilities in St. Louis. \u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\">As Freeman approached the landing strip, a goose flew into the port-side air\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\">intake of his modified T-38 Talon jet trainer. The bird strike was witnessed\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\">by two airmen in the control tower, and they reported that they did not see\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Freeman attempt to eject. In any case, the jet was too close to the ground\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\">to allow proper parachute deployment. Shards of Plexiglas apparently entered\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\">the engine, and the jet pancaked onto the nearby road where it immediately\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\">disintegrated. Freeman was killed instantly; he was 34. His wife Faith only\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\">learned about the accident when a reporter contacted her at her home. NASA\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\">afterwards took steps to make sure that in future space-related accidents,\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\">family members would hear the news from other astronauts first rather than\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\">from the media.<br \/>\n<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Culled from: Wikipedia<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Submitted by: <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ghostscribe.wordpress.com\"><span class=\"il\" style=\"color: #222222;\">Aimee<\/span><\/a><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><em><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s First Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Ted Freeman achieved unwelcome distinction on October 31, 1964, when he\u00a0became the first fatality of the United States Astronaut Corps. That\u00a0morning, Freeman, a test pilot and one of the third group of pilots selected\u00a0for astronaut training by NASA, was returning to Ellington Air Force Base\u00a0near Houston from McDonnell Douglas [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4958"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4959,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4958\/revisions\/4959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}