A Boeing 737, on approach to Chicago’s Midway Airport, crashes into a neighborhood about a mile and a half short of the runway. Forty-three of the sixty-one people on board died, as did two people on the ground. One of the deceased passengers was Dorothy Hunt, the spouse of Watergate ringleader C. Howard Hunt. She was reportedly the ‘paymistress’ of hush money to the Watergate defendants and their families to keep the burglars from cooperating with authorities and testifying at the trial.
When investigators combed through the wreckage, they found a packet of $100 bills totaling $10,000 in a purse belonging to Ms. Hunt. It was also discovered that she had taken out a $225,000 flight insurance policy at Washington National Airport (now Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport) before departing. This led to wild supposition and rumors that she (and her fellow passengers) had been the victim of a plot to hush her up permanently in an effort to keep her from spilling the dirt on the White House’s involvement in the Watergate scandal.
However, the thing I immediately took away from this was that this was fifty years ago, and that the type of aircraft involved, the Boeing 737, is still in service with countless airlines today.
December 11, 1931 - British Parliament passes the Statute of Westminster, which recognises the independence and autonomy of the six Commonwealth nations: Australia, Canada, Irish Free State, New Zealand, Newfoundland and South Africa.
Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire. This act became the catalyst for the Tunisian Revolution. The success of the Tunisian protests sparked protests in several other Arab countries.
December 22, 2001: A passenger on American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris, Richard Reid, unsuccessfully attempts to destroy the plane in flight by igniting explosives he’d hidden in his shoes.
January 29, 1863: The Bear River Massacre in Idaho. Over 250 Shoshoni are brutally killed by the California Volunteers. Many of the dead are women and children.
A U.S. Navy midget submarine located a missing hydrogen bomb that had fallen from a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber into the Mediterranean Sea off Palomeras, Spain.
March 28, 1979: America’s worst commercial nuclear accident occurred with a partial meltdown inside the Unit 2 reactor at Three Mile Island near Middletown, Pennsylvania
March 31, 1993: Actor Brandon Lee, 28, was accidentally shot to death during the filming of a movie in Wilmington, North Carolina, when he was hit by a bullet fragment that had become lodged in a prop gun.
June 12, 1987: The Cold War begins to end when, at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, U.S. President Ronald Reagan publicly challenges Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.
“There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
17 August 1590 — Roanoke Colony is searched for but is never found. It is one of the oldest unsolved mysteries of these United States — the “Lost Colony”.
Over 110 colonists vanished without a trace.
Roanoke Colony was located in present-day North Carolina. On 17 August 1590 Governor John White returned to Roanoke after a much-delayed resupply trip to England. He’d been gone three years. Upon landing on Roanoke Island he returned to… nobody. Nothing. They were all gone. No signs of a struggle or battle were ever found. John White found only two clues: the cryptic word, “CROATOAN”, carved into a fence, and three letters, “CRO”, carved into a tree.
Of the more than 110 colonists that vanished without a trace, one was 3 year old Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the ‘New World’. Little Virginia was born in Roanoke Colony on 18 August 1587. Governor John White was her grandfather.
The people of Roanoke were never found.
Not much is known of John White after the Roanoke mystery. The World War II Liberty ship SS John White was named in his honor.
17 August 2008 — At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, swimmer Michael Phelps became the first person to win eight gold medals at one Olympic Games. Phelps broke fellow American swimmer Mark Spitz’s 1972 record of seven first-place finishes at any single Olympic Games.
Today in history: 60 years ago today, on 28 August 1963 in Washington DC, Martin Luther King, jr delivered his “I Have A Dream” speech.
Most of his 16 minute speech was written, and you can see him reading and looking down at his paper. But about 11 minutes into it he pivoted to a speech he had given two months earlier, on 26 June 1963 in Detroit’s Cobo Hall — and this was his original “I Have A Dream” speech.
After he pivots he no longer reads from his paper. He speaks from his heart. Before he pivoted the crowd was polite. Golf claps. After he pivots the imagery he stirs is timeless.
Here are his words at the pivot point:
“Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
“And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.”
On this day in 1837, one of the leaders of the Lower Canada Rebellion, Jean-Joseph Girouard, with a price on his head of £500, surrendered to John Simpson, an official with the Governor General.
Girouard praised Simpson for “the generous and prudent treatment of the persecuted Canadians which he ensured in his area.”
