Apollo 1 Fire

Date: January 27, 1967 • Location: Merritt Island, United States

Apollo program: Astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee are killed in a fire during a test of their Apollo 1 spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the United States human spaceflight program led by NASA, which landed the first humans on the Moon in 1969. The Apollo program was conceived in 1960 in the Dwight D. Eisenhower presidency during Project Mercury and executed after Project Gemini. The Apollo program was later dedicated to President John F. Kennedy's national goal, "before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" in his address to the U.S. Congress on May 25, 1961.