Pacific Ocean

Jan. 11 1935: Amelia Earhart began a trip from Honolulu to Oakland that made her the first woman to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean. 1964: U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry issued the first government report saying smoking may be hazardous to one's health.

Dolphins served as attendants to the Greek god Poseidon. In days of yore, sailors regarded them as a sign of fair weather and good fortune. Peter Attia, therefore, felt reassured when a large pod tagged along with him for several hours early Tuesday morning during his attempt to swim from Catalina Island to the California coast, America's answer to the illustrious English Channel marathon. At the time, about three hours into the swim, he was fighting choppy seas and nausea. "They were as close as four feet away," recalls Attia, a 32-year-old surgical resident at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

What is it about New Orleans? Why does it loom so large on the American psyche, take up such a huge chunk of our collective imagination? It's not that big. Its population of 484,000 puts it at 31st among American cities. Its metropolitan area of 1.3 million is dwarfed by many others whose destruction at the hands of a natural disaster would certainly be mourned but not with the intensity of feeling that the nation is feeling now. The breaches in the levees of New Orleans seemed to have landed a blow to our national solar plexus.

South of Oregon and far north of the Golden Gate, the Pacific coastal road retreats inland, bypassing 120 miles of wild, rugged shoreline aptly called the Lost Coast. In this isolated pocket of gargantuan redwoods, surf-pounded mountains and hidden valleys, there's scant access to road-trip staples like cell-phone connections and four-lane asphalt. But brave the bumps and guardrail-free switchbacks of the lonely Lost Coast roads, and you'll drive into a wild, majestic California little changed from the time when today's 2,000-year-old redwoods were just seedlings.

A Memorable Place By Amy Houghton Special to the Sun A calm place along Oregon's coast In this age of meditation and wellness centers, just about everyone is familiar with the idea of visualization, the act of taking your mind to a peaceful place and creating a sense of calm. When I need to practice visualization, I conjure up memories of Ocean Haven, a private inn on the Pacific Ocean just south of Yachats, Ore. My husband, Jonathan, and I stayed at the inn during a two-week Seattle-to-San Francisco trip.

The World Jailed Palestinian activist Marwan Barghouti ended his on-again, off-again campaign for presidency of the Palestine Liberation Organization, clearing the way for interim leader Mahmoud Abbas, who is favored to win the vote next month. A Chilean judge charged former dictator Augusto Pinochet, 89, with kidnapping nine people and murdering one of them during his military rule, saying that the former dictator was competent to stand trial and placing him under house arrest. Tests showed that Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor A. Yushchenko had ingested dioxin, causing prosecutors to reopen an investigation into possible poisoning.

A dispute over a lease extension on Kwajalein Atoll - the site of a major U.S. missile testing range in the middle of the Pacific Ocean - is threatening the financial lifeblood of two island countries. An agreement expected to be submitted soon for Congressional approval calls for the United States to make annual payments starting at $15 million a year, up from $11.3 million, to the group that owns the atoll, led by a small band of traditional tribal chiefs in the Marshall Islands. But the landowners say the amount is far too low and complain that they've been shut out of the negotiations, which call for a 63-year lease.

Precisely 200 years ago today, the new American nation broke past the confines of the Mississippi River to begin its march toward continental size and world power. Unsought and unexpected, but mightily cherished, the Louisiana Territory came into U.S. possession at a fire-sale price of less than 4 cents an acre. In the words of the most beautiful of American anthems, amber waves of grain would henceforth stretch over fruited plains to reach purple mountain majesties as the young republic instantly more than doubled in size.

They were hometown heroes, much-loved sons, daughters, husbands and wives. They lived lives on Earth and among the stars. They talked about the mundane and the magnificent, and people wanted to hear what they had to say. Here is a look at the seven Columbia astronauts in their own words, as reported by wire services, television networks and their newspapers, both hometown and college. Michael Anderson Michael Anderson, 43, was the payload commander. He was flying for the Air Force when NASA chose him in 1994 as one of only a handful of black astronauts.