A troop of Boy Scouts had arranged to have the American flag that belonged to their troop included in the flight kit of the Challenger. They had tried for the better part of a year to get this flag to fly on a space shuttle, only to be horrified to witness the explosion of the Challenger, with their flag aboard, 70 seconds after lift off. The amazing part of this story is that, nine months later, this flag was recovered, completely unscathed, from the bottom of the ocean.