Texas, Columbia, Astronauts, Israel and Palestine

How do legends and legacies merge and synchromystically intertwine? Let's look at this first day of February.

On February 1, 1861, Texas seceded from the Union. The strongest opponent was Sam Houston (March 2, 1793 – July 26, 1863), who felt Texas should remain part of the USA.

On February 1, 1894, John Ford (real name John Martin "Jack" Feeney), American director and producer, was born in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, and grew up in Portland, Maine. Ford became famed for his Westerns. One of Ford's most famous proteges turned out to be John Wayne. Wayne's birth name was Marion Robert Morrison, which was changed to Marion Mitchell Morrison; he used the stage name John Wayne.

On February 1, 1961, Daniel Tani, American engineer and astronaut was born in Ridley Park, Pennsylvania, but he considers Lombard, Illinois, to be his hometown. His parents, Rose and Henry N. Tani, (now deceased), during World War II, were relocated from their California farm to the Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah as part of the Japanese American internment program of the U.S. government. They lived for several months in converted horse stables at the Tanforan Racetrack. On December 19, 2007, during Tani's stay on the International Space Station as a member of Expedition 16, he was informed by the ground team that his mother had been killed when a freight train collided with her car.

On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia on mission STS-107 disintegrated during reentry into the Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts aboard. Those seven astronauts' names are:

Michael P. Anderson, American astronaut (b. 1959),
David Brown, American astronaut (b. 1956),
Kalpana Chawla, American astronaut (b. 1961),
Laurel Clark, American astronaut (b. 1961),
Rick Husband, American astronaut (b. 1957),
Willie McCool, American astronaut (b. 1961), and
Ilan Ramon, Israeli astronaut (b. 1954).

Ilan Ramon was the first Israeli astronaut. His first name, Ilan, means "tree" in Hebrew. Ilan changed his last name from Wolferman when he joined the Israeli Air Force. On June 7, 1981, he was the youngest pilot taking part in Operation Opera, Israel's strike against Iraq's unfinished Osiraq nuclear reactor, 10 miles southeast of Baghdad.

One location often mentioned ten years ago for where the parts of the Columbia fell was Palestine, Texas. The irony of that location was not lost on many at the time, considering the fact the Columbia carried an Israeli aboard. Even this remarkable "coincidence" is apparent in this Wikipedia mention:

Palestine entered the news in February 2003, as one of the East Texas towns that received much of the debris from the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, where seven astronauts were killed, including the first Israeli astronaut. Palestine is also home to the NASA Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility (renamed after the shuttle crash), which has flown 1700 high-altitude balloons for universities and research agencies. Source.

(Above) An FBI agent and a Texas Department of Public Safety officer looked over a 4-foot by 6-foot piece of the Space Shuttle Columbia that was found in the median along State Highway 155 north of Palestine, Texas on Sunday, February 2, 2003.

(Below) The space shuttle blew up over North Texas and pieces of the wreckage were scattered over East Texas and Louisiana.

Portions of this blog, in terms of photos 

and content, are reprinted under the 

Fair Use Doctrine of International Copyright Law 

as educational and/or editorial material 

of which commentary is made, 

without benefit of financial gain. 

This is applicable throughout 

the entire Twilight Language blog.

Sections of this entry may reflect summaries of data from Wikipedia.