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Crash of Air France flight 4590
Upon the departure of a Continental Airlines DC-10 from Charles de Gaulle International Airport on 25th July, 2000, a metal wear strip used during a recent repair of the aircraft was dislodged and fell onto the runway. The titanium alloy piece was approximately 1.4 mm thick, a little over an inch wide and roughly 17 inches long. A scheduled 3pm clean-up of the runway failed to take place, and the debris remained where it fell. French President Jacques Chirac was inbound on a 747 from Japan, following his attendance at a G8 summit. The arrival of his flight forced the adjustment of Air France flight 4590 to a different take-off…
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The General Slocum
On Wednesday, June 15, 1904 the ship was chartered for $350 by St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Little Germany district of Manhattan. Over 1,400 passengers, mostly women and children, boarded the Slocum, which was to sail up the East River and then eastward across the Long Island Sound to Locust Grove, a picnic site in Eatons Neck, Long Island. Around 9:30 a.m. the ship began its doomed trip. As it was passing East 90th Street, a fire started in the Lamp Room in the forward section, possibly caused by a discarded cigarette or match. It was fueled by the straw, oily rags, and lamp oil strewn around the…
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The Tornado that created the Mayo Clinic
Oppressive heat, dense air and a quiet stillness of life filled the citizens of Rochester, Minnesota with dread during the day of August 21, 1883. Conditions in town had turned for the worse by the evening when the skies had turned to black and sudden gale force winds whipped across the land. These are all the markings of an impending tornado. A small tornado formed in another area of Minnesota earlier in the day, but it was a much larger tornado that touched down at 6:30 P.M. that was the cause of the most concern as it was moving northeast, directly towards Rochester. At a mile wide, this F5 tornado…
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USS Indianapolis – July 1945
Hooper: You were on the Indianapolis? Brodie: What happened? Quint: Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, Chief. We was comin’ back from the island of Tinian to Leyte… just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes…. Noon the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low and he saw us. He’s a young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper, anyway he saw us and come in low. And three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and start to pick us up. You know that was the time I…
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Vesuvius Erupts in 79 AD
Vesuvius is currently the only active volcano in mainland Europe, and while the volcano has been dormant since 1944, the cataclysmic eruption that started on August 24, 79 AD reminds everyone of the real danger that Vesuvius poses. For 2 days the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in Italy were being hit by the most famous volcanic explosion of Vesuvius, but the dates in August that have been accepted for so long are now being challenged as incorrect. Years worth of earthquakes led up to the eruption but as the people were unaware that earthquakes and volcanic activity was linked, the people remained in their homes as seismic activity is…
