April 1981 - April 12, 1981 (Sunday)

April 12, 1981 (Sunday)

• The world's first reusable spacecraft, the space shuttle Columbia was launched from Cape Canaveral at 7:00 a.m. EST. As one historian noted later, "Never before in the history of the space program had NASA asked its astronauts to pilot a rocket or a spacecraft into space on its maiden voyage... NASA engineers counted 748 different ways in which the two astronauts on the maiden voyage of the space shuttle Columbia could die.". John Young, who had gone into space four times before, and Robert Crippen, who would fly three more shuttle missions, reached orbit and returned two days later. Delayed several times, the liftoff came 20 years to the day after Yuri Gagarin had become the first man to be sent into outer space, on the April 12, 1961 liftoff of Vostok 1.
• Died: Joe Louis, 66, American heavyweight boxing champion from 1937 to 1949; the night before, he had watched Larry Holmes defeat challenger Trevor Berbick in Lasa Vegas