I remember living in Australia and waking up to discover that Ansett Australia, half of the duopolistic airline market in Australia, had attempted a dramatic, middle of the night rescue plan that had failed, meaning that the company would be winding down and leaving Australia with only a single major airline. Normally massive news with far reaching ramifications that would keep the news media obsessed for weeks… if it were not for the fact that across the globe, 9/11 was in the middle of happening so the Ansett story got bumped far down the front page.
Recently reading about the Concorde dredged up another long forgotten memory of a similar vein. An Air France Concorde famously crashed on the 25th of July due to a tire failure, killing 113 people. After much diligent investigation, remediations were put into place on all existing Concordes and the very first passenger test flight resumed service and flew from London to New York, landing at JFK just a few hours before the planes hit the towers. The flight carried all BA crew and I can just imagine the jubilation turning to shock turning to “WTF does this all mean for the hard work we’ve all done?”
Interested to hear other stories of a similar nature, where something would have been the biggest news story of the day, if it were not dramatically overshadowed by the actual biggest news story of the day.
June 3, 1932, Lou Gehrig hit 4 homeruns in the game (Yankees/Baseball) but John McGraw announced his resignation that day. As the most successful manager in baseball history that eclipsed Lou great day. Sitting further down yet, Tony Lazzeri apparently hit for the cycle that day which would normally have been the lead sports story for the day.
November 22, 1963 was of course the Day John F. Kennedy was shot. Not a big news story until much later, it was the day that Doctor Who premiered on the BBC.
March 28, 1979 was the day of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident. This was also the day Margaret Thatcher made to motion of no confidence which passed by one vote. This knocked the Labour Party out of power for an extended period.
Minor nitpick…Doctor Who premiered one day later, on the 23rd. Though according to wiki it premered 80 seconds late because of BBC coverage of the assassination.
There will probably be dozens of examples during WWII, I’ll open with this one:
December 7, 1941: British Garrison in Tobruk, Libya relieved when Rommel withdrew. This was a big thing at that point in the African campaign, but overshadowed by the Pearl Harbor attack (and Japan declaring war on the US and British Empire).
In the US at least it was kind of big news when Farrah Fawcett died (age 62) June 25, 2009. But then it was announced Michael Jackson died at age 50. This was the big story of the day.
Funny to see this thread (well, not funny “ha ha”) – in the thread regarding the Baltimore bridge disaster, I mentioned a similar incident in South Texas where a barge rammed into the Queen Isabella Causeway collapsing a section of bridge. Due to it being the middle of the night and the missing section being at the peak of the bridge, several drivers were unable to see the danger and plummeted into the channel. Eight people were killed.
It occurred on September 15, 2001, when the nation was still in September 11 shock and received comparatively little coverage.
LA Punk icon Darby Crash died of a heroine overdose less than 24 hours before John Lennon was assassinated. It’s suspected that Darby wished to go out like Sid Vicious with all of the equivalent media attention. Many fans didn’t even find out about his death until weeks or months later.
Andy Warhol felt cheated that his June 3rd, 1968 shooting was overshadowed by RFK’s June 5th murder.
Christina Grimmie was an emerging singer who was gunned down by a deranged fan in Orlando June 10, 2016 but two days later, also in Orlando, was the Pulse nightclub massacre.
Mark Clark took Rome on June 4, 1944. His soldiers said they were risked needlessly so that there was still daylight for the photographers. Two days later was D-Day in Normandy.
June is busting out all over.
ETA: Puff Daddy is just grateful that the Baltimore bridge is filling today’s news cycle instead of himself
BlockquoteSacramento rampage suspect Joseph Ferguson triggered the police shootout in which he died early Monday to “go down in history” he said in an obscenity-laced videotape.
- Lodi News-Sentinal, Tues. Sept 11, 2001
Not the same day, but Groucho Marx died August 19, 1977, just three days after Elvis Presley died on August 16. Elvis was still dominating the news cycle.
The Football War between Honduras and El Salvador occurred just as Apollo 11 was on its way. And the Russians crash landed an unmanned probe, Luna 15, on the Moon while Armstrong and Aldrin were there.
I’m not sure if this fits, but Frank Sinatra’s ambulance apparently made it to the hospital in near record time the night he died, since it was also the night that broadcast the Seinfeld final episode.
The Peshtigo Fire, in Peshtigo, WI, was bigger and deadlier than the Chicago Fire. Unfortunately, they happened on the same day. And who had ever heard of Peshtigo, WI?
Those of us who grew up in northeastern Wisconsin all learned about the Peshtigo Fire in grade school or high school, with the obligatory statement that, “because it happened on the same night as the Chicago fire, no one knows about it now.” Well, except for all of us Cheeseheads.
