Ronald Reagan: The Challenger Disaster

On the night of the Challenger disaster, President Ronald Reagan had been scheduled to give his annual State of the Union address but postponed it for a week and instead gave a national address on the Challenger disaster from the Oval Office of the White House.

It was written by Peggy Noonan, and finished with the following statement, which quoted from the poem "High Flight" by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.“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."