Today in History: April 10, Northern Ireland's Good Friday Agreement
In 1912, the British liner RMS Titanic set sail from Southampton, England, bound for New York on its ill-fated maiden voyage.
In 1919, Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata was assassinated by forces loyal to President Venustiano Carranza.
In 1963, the nuclear submarine USS Thresher (SSN-593) sank during deep-diving tests east of Cape Cod, Mass., killing all 129 aboard.
In 1971, the US table tennis team arrived in China at the invitation of the communist government for a goodwill visit that came to be known as 'ping-pong diplomacy.'
In 1998, the Northern Ireland peace talks concluded as negotiators signed the Good Friday Agreement, a landmark settlement to end 30 years of bitter rivalries and bloody attacks.
In 2019, scientists released the first image ever made of a black hole, revealing a fiery, doughnut-shape object in a galaxy 55 million light-years from earth.
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Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
The forgotten story of the world's deadliest plane crash
Tragedy generally hits hardest close to home, where the places and locations in question can trigger grief and trauma long after the initial event has slipped queasily into the past. Which might explain why the collective British memory does not easily recall the deadliest plane crash of all time: a catastrophe that took place more than 8,000 miles away, on the other side of the planet, but claimed 520 lives. It did so an exact 40 years ago today, on August 12 1985, on a wild mountainside, 60 miles north-west of Tokyo. The fate of Flight 123 is certainly not forgotten in Japan, where the scarring is still visible (there will be commemorations at the crash site today, as there are every year). True, its loss of life did not match the 583 victims of the Tenerife Air Disaster of March 27 1977, where two Boeing 747s collided on the runway on the largest of the Canary Islands. Nor does it equate to the unique circumstances of the two Boeing 767s flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center on September 11 2001. But Flight 123 holds its own dark position in the annals of aviation – as the deadliest crash involving a single aircraft. A ticking time bomb Perhaps inevitably, with a fatality count of such awful weight, that aircraft was also a 747 – specifically a 747 SR-46, toiling away for Japan Airlines (JAL). 'SR' stands for 'short range', with the plane part of the boom in domestic flights in the Land of the Rising Sun that took hold in the early 1970s. Demand was so high that, in 1972, JAL placed an order with Boeing for a bespoke version of the 'Jumbo Jet' – one adapted for maximum passenger capacity, but with strengthened body structure and landing gear able to cope with the regular take-offs and landings (and considerable stress) inherent in short-haul flying. So it was that the 747 SR-46 emerged from Boeing's Seattle plant with space for 498 travellers; a figure that would rise to 550 after further modification. It made its first commercial flight, for JAL, on October 7 1973. JA8119 – to use its registration number – arrived in the JAL fleet in 1974, and promptly became a workhorse. By the time of its demise in 1985, it had chalked up 25,000 hours of flying, and 18,800 flights; the majority of them quick trips back and forth between Tokyo and Japan's other major cities. Flight 123 – a scheduled service from Haneda Airport in the capital to Itami Airport in Osaka, which should have taken one hour – was the fifth of six short hops it was due to make that day. However, the cause of the disaster was not rooted in that summer afternoon in the mid-1980s. It had been planted seven years earlier – and with a grim symmetry, on the same route. On June 2 1978, JA8119 was damaged by a heavy touch-down at Itami. The landing was so jarring that the 747's tail hit the runway (a 'tailstrike') – so forcefully that this caused cracking in the rear bulkhead, a vital component of any plane's pressurisation system. The breakage was repaired, swiftly but – it would transpire – insufficiently. JA8119 had 8,830 hours on its log at the time of the strike, and would fly on, without much further incident, for 16,170 more. Yet deep within its fuselage, a clock was ticking. The death toll from the crash was tragically inflated by unfortunate timing: August 12 1985 fell within Obon season – a celebration of ancestral spirits, effectively Japan's 'Day of the Dead', which moves around the calendar, but generally sees the Japanese travel home in great numbers to spend time with loved ones. So it was that JA8119 was full of families for its early-evening departure. The records indicate that, of the 524 passengers and crew on board, 502 were Japanese. They included one notable celebrity – the 43-year-old singer and actor, Kyu Sakamoto. 32 unthinkable minutes JA8119 took off from Haneda at 6.12pm, a little behind schedule. For the next 12 minutes, it proceeded as normal. But at 6.24pm, as the 747 SR-46 crossed the coastal waters of Sagami Bay, 50 miles south-west of Tokyo, the decade-old patch-up job on its rear bulkhead finally failed. The plane suffered an explosive decompression which brought down the ceiling at the back of the economy cabin, severed all four hydraulic lines and knocked out the vertical stabiliser. At a stroke, the jet was all but uncontrollable. At the opposite end of the aircraft, Captain Masami Takahama – a 49-year-old pilot of significant experience – remained calm. A distress call was put out; an emergency plan to turn Flight 123 around and return to Haneda was discussed. But it soon became clear that JA8119 was incapable of nuanced manoeuvre. Cockpit recordings suggest its crew was already beginning to suffer from hypoxia, a lack of oxygen in the decompressing jet leading to slow answers and an audible difficulty in comprehending instructions. In the 21 minutes which followed the explosion, JA8119 flew erratically, lurching and rolling, gaining and losing altitude – and, crucially, swerving north, so that it was back over land. Its final 11 minutes were a desperate struggle. By 6.45pm, the jet was descending rapidly, had plunged to 13,500ft (4,100m), and was veering towards high mountains. At 6.46pm, Takahama was heard to utter the weary words: 'This may be hopeless.' At 6.49pm, there was a brief stall, at 9,000ft (2,700m). And while this was corrected, seven minutes later, at 6.56pm, JA8119 clipped a ridge on 1,979m Mount Takamagahara in Japan's central Gunma Prefecture. The collision dislodged the end third of the right wing, and two of the four engines. Now conclusively disabled, the 747 flipped onto its back, struck a second ridge, and exploded. The impact was so violent that it registered on the seismometer at the Shin-Etsu Earthquake Observatory, 100 miles away. It is impossible to say how many people were still alive in the immediate aftermath of the crash, because the rescue mission was as poorly executed as the repair work that had led to the disaster. It was still daytime when JA8119 went into the mountain, but as the light faded, a Japanese military helicopter did a cursory scan of the site, and reported no obvious signs of life. With night imminent, and the terrain challenging, paramedics did not attempt to reach the wreckage until the following morning. Interviewed in her hospital bed, Yumi Ochiai, an off-duty flight attendant who was one of just four survivors – all female; all of whom had been sitting on the left hand side of the cabin, between rows 54 and 60 – remembered seeing lights and listening to the noise of rotor blades after waking up in the charred remains of the plane. She expected help to arrive, she said, but the only sounds she heard for the next few hours were the cries of the injured and dying. The fallout The government response was rather more clear-eyed. The official inquiry, which released its findings on June 19 1987, placed the blame on the inadequate repair in 1978. By that point, JAL president Yasumoto Takagi had already lost his job; he tendered his resignation on August 24 1985, less than a fortnight after the crash. Sadly, the catastrophe claimed two further victims as its aftershocks reverberated around Japan. Two JAL employees – maintenance manager Hiroo Tominaga, and engineer Susumu Tajima, who had inspected JA8119 after the tailstrike incident, and had declared it airworthy – took their own lives, buckling beneath the psychological burden of the disaster. Forty years on, the crash site is home to a memorial; two unadorned stone triangles, set against the slope. The relatives of the dead gather there every August 12, perhaps taking small consolation from Mount Takamagahara's place in Japanese folklore as a parallel to Greece's Mount Olympus; a heavenly home of the gods. There are more tangible echoes as well. Not least the Safety Promotion Center, a museum attached to Haneda Airport, which examines the causes of the disaster, and the lessons to be learnt from it. Among its artefacts are fragments of the plane, and farewell letters written by its passengers in the 32 unthinkable minutes when they were probably aware that they were going to die. JAL has recovered to be Japan's second biggest airline, but suffered an inevitable decline in the wake of Flight 123; passenger numbers fell by a third in the next year, as a wary public avoided the brand. Nonetheless, not everyone affected by the crash was put off flying. Captain Takahama's daughter Yoko became a flight attendant, working for JAL. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more. Solve the daily Crossword
Buzz Feed
a day ago
- Buzz Feed
19 Of The Biggest Historical Lies People Still Believe
Recently, a post from Reddit user Repulsive-Finger-954 on the popular Ask Reddit forum caught my eye. In it, they asked people, "What is the biggest historical lie that many people believe?" and the answers were both entertaining and informative. I decided I had to share; so, here are some of the best: "Vikings didn't wear horned helmets." "People believe that Napoleon was this abnormally short man. He was 5'6, which was pretty average back then. I'm pretty sure it was this smear campaign of sorts that painted him as this weirdly short, unpowerful guy." "George Washington's dentures were not made of wood, but rather a combination of teeth from slaves, ivory (hippopotamus, walrus and/or elephant), animal teeth, and metals." "While Paul Revere is often credited with being the sole rider to warn the colonies of the British, he was actually one of five riders who alerted colonists on the night of April 18. Revere's mission relied on secrecy, and he didn't shout 'The British are coming!' as the phrase would have been confusing to locals who still considered themselves British. Instead, Revere's network of riders, signal guns, and church bells effectively spread the alarm." People believe that the Nazis were hated and opposed for their treatment of Jewish people from the beginning. There has been plenty of narrative building through the years around the idea that the Allies were seeking justice for the Jewish people from the start. It was only when we witnessed the extent of the Holocaust that the villainy of the Nazis became more widely recognized and acknowledged." "The idea that people used to believe the world was flat. In elementary school, I was taught that no one wanted to fund Columbus's voyage because they thought he'd just sail off the end of the world. Utter nonsense." "People believe that Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb. He did not. Several other men pioneered it before him." "People believe that women stayed home and only men worked. For the poor, which was the vast majority of people throughout history, everybody who could work worked, even the kids. If you didn't, the whole family would starve and die." "People believe that the US Civil War was over states' rights." "People believe that MLK was socially acceptable to white people during the 1960s, and not in favor of radically changing the socioeconomic order of the US. He was a socialist who was widely reviled by the white culture of the time. He's been re-imagined by white people as someone willing to accept slow electoral solutions to racial problems." "Many people still believe that Marie Antoinette said, 'Let them eat cake.'" "The myth that there ever was a famine in Ireland. It was a genocide, and the English were exporting enough meat and grain from Ireland to feed three times the Irish population." "People in ancient and medieval times lived past 30 or 40 on a regular basis. The 'life expectancy' was low due to child mortality." "The idea that Galileo was imprisoned because of the heliocentric model. Nope, it was because he pissed off the pope, who was funding his research." "There is a myth that the US has never experienced an authoritarian government. In actuality, a large portion of its history has been authoritarian. The Jim Crow South was an authoritarian government that existed until 1964." "The myth that carrots give you good eyesight. That lie came from Britain during WWII to hide the fact that they had a new technology called radar." "The idea that Catherine of Aragon failed Henry VIII because she didn't have a son and heir. She and Henry had — at least — three sons." "That Samurai despised guns and saw them as 'dishonorable tools.'" And finally: "That nothing much happened in the 'Dark Ages.'" What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments. Better yet, tell me your own historical pet peeves that drive you up the wall! If you have something to share but prefer to remain anonymous, feel free to check out this anonymous form. Who knows — your comment could be included in a future BuzzFeed article! Please note: Some comments have been edited for length and/or clarity.
Epoch Times
2 days ago
- Epoch Times
Some Meals to Remember
On Dec. 4, 1783, nine days after the last British soldier left American soil, Gen. George Washington went to Fraunces Tavern in New York City. Since being constructed in 1719, that building had operated as a boarding house and bar. Washington chose the tavern's Long Room as the site to bid a final farewell to his officers from the Continental Army. People who drop by the dining and drinking establishment today, as I did recently, can see that historic room. They might also check out an extensive collection of Colonial American, Revolutionary War, and Early Republic artifacts.
