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This Week in Boomer History: Peace Corps ... Concorde ... Greatest!

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Noteworthy events from our shared experience

Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali) becomes  heavyweight champion of the world on Feb. 25, 1964, when Sonny Liston doesn't answer the bell for the seventh round. "Incredibly, the loud-mouthed, bragging, insulting youngster had been telling the truth all along," writes Robert Lipsyte in the New York Times.

Steve Jobs is born Feb. 24, 1955. In 1976 he starts Apple Computer with Steve Wozniak and Ron Wayne, who sells his shares for $800 the same year.

On Feb. 26, 1993, terrorists detonate 1,300 pounds of explosives at the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. A memorial to the six people who died that day is destroyed in the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

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President Kennedy and R. Sargent Shriver greet Peace Corps volunteers in August 1961
Abbie Rowe



In establishing the Peace Corps by executive order on March 1, 1961, President John F. Kennedy says that every participant "will know that he or she is sharing in the great common task of bringing to man that decent way of life which is the foundation of freedom and a condition of peace."

The  first CDs and CD players go on sale in the United States on March 2, 1983. CD sales will peak in 2000 at 943 million units.

Wilt Chamberlain sets an NBA single-game record on March 2, 1962, scoring  100 points for the Philadelphia Warriors in a 169-147 win over the New York Knicks.

The supersonic Concorde takes flight March 2, 1969. In 2003, three years after the only fatal Concorde accident, the 3½-hour transatlantic service ends.

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Concorde at the Smithsonian's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, National Air and Space Museum


Let us read This Week in Boomer History to you:

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Credits - Muhammad Ali: Central Press/Getty Images; JFK and Sargent Shriver: Kennedy Library; Concorde: Chris Devers/Flickr
Music: Test Drive: Zapac via ccMixter

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