1986

The space shuttle Challenger explodes four miles above the coast of Florida. On board along with crew members is Christa McAuliffe, a schoolteacher from New Hampshire. NPR reporters Howard Berkes and Danny Zwerdling break the story of why the Challenger disaster occurred.

Susan Stamberg leaves ATC to launch Weekend Edition Sunday.

On the Feb. 20 ATC, reporter Bill Buzenberg took listeners to two different campaign rallies in the Philippines. One was for Ferdinand Marcos, the entrenched dictator. The other was for Corazon Aquino, a onetime housewife who ran against Marcos after the 1983 assassination of her husband Benigno, a longtime Marcos foe.

Buzenberg: "If a Marcos rally is like a Las Vegas stage show, then an Aquino rally can be likened to a cross between a revival meeting and a huge block party... Mrs. Aquino is not a politican, not a great orator. Sometimes she just stands on the stage in her yellow dress and smiles. What matters most, according to her supporters, is her simplicity and sincerity, which they contrast with what they see as the duplicity of President Marcos."

Woman at the rally: "If we still do not change Marcos now, I think we'll have an almost impossible task of removing him. Because already, there is so-called second-generation cronies, and not only his family, his children, his grandchildren, his great-grandchildren. It will just be too much. They will be like snakes, multiplying so fast that, even though we want to get rid of them, we cannot."

Hear the broadcast.

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