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Boston Globe
17-03-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Today in History: March 17, white South Africans vote to end apartheid
Advertisement In 1776, the Revolutionary War Siege of Boston ended as British forces, observing a battery of cannons placed on Dorchester Heights by the rebels, evacuated the city. In 1950, scientists at the University of California Berkeley, announced that they had created a new radioactive element they named 'californium.' In 1969, Golda Meir took office as prime minister in Israel, beginning a term that would last through five crucial years in the nation's history. In 1970, a gunman aboard Eastern Air Lines Shuttle Flight 1320 from Newark, N.J., to Boston shot the two pilots as the crew prepared to land at Logan International Airport. Although mortally wounded, the copilot, James Hartley, managed to wrestle the gun away and shoot the hijacker multiple times. The pilot, Robert Wilbur Jr., 35, was able to land the plane while fending off the injured hijacker, John Divivo. The gunman died by suicide while awaiting trial at Charles Street Jail. In 1992, white South Africans voted 68.7 to 31.3 percent to end over 40 years of apartheid in a national referendum. (Voters of all races were allowed to vote two years later in the general election that resulted in Nelson Mandela becoming president.) In 2003, edging to the brink of war, US President George W. Bush gave Iraqi President Saddam Hussein 48 hours to leave his country. Iraq rejected Bush's ultimatum, saying a US attack to force Saddam from power would be 'a grave mistake.' Advertisement In 2010, Michael Jordan became the first ex-player to become a majority owner in the NBA as the league's Board of Governors unanimously approved his $275 million bid to buy the Charlotte Bobcats from Bob Johnson. In 2016, finally bowing to years of public pressure, SeaWorld Entertainment said it would stop breeding killer whales and making them perform crowd-pleasing tricks. In 2023, the International Criminal Court said it had issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes because of his alleged involvement in abductions of children from Ukraine.
USA Today
30-01-2025
- General
- USA Today
DC plane crash has striking similarities to a 1949 tragedy
A passenger plane near Washington, D.C. An unexpected military aircraft. And a fatal mid-air collision. Wednesday's deadly collision between an American Airlines flight and an Army Black Hawk helicopter at Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) shares striking similarities to a crash that happened in the same airspace on Nov. 1, 1949. In that crash, a military Lockheed P-38 Lightning having engine trouble slammed into an Eastern Air Lines Douglas DC-4, according to the Arlington Historical Society. Fifty-five people died in the crash, all of them from Eastern Air Lines Flight 537. At the time it was the deadliest airliner incident in American history, the historical society said. Wednesday's crash killed 67 people, 64 aboard the American Air Lines flight and three aboard the Black Hawk. In that crash, experts said the American flight was on final approach to land at DCA when it collided with the low-flying helicopter on a "proficiency training flight" when it crashed, according to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. In the 1949 crash, the pilot of the P-38 was with the Bolivian Air Force and was testing out the plane as part of a sale from the United States to Bolivia. "Glen Tigner, 21, an air traffic controller on duty at the National Airport Tower on Nov. 1, 1949, sounded the crash alarm," the historical society says in describing the crash. "'Turn left! Turn left!' Tigner had radioed moments earlier as a Bolivian Air Force fighter on a practice run veered toward a commercial flight on approach to the airport from the south." News reports at the time captured the grim recovery of bodies from the Potomac, victims still strapped to their seats. Flight 53 had taken off from Boston, stopped in New York City, and was headed south to New Orleans. According to a 2005 Arlington Fire Journal report, retired firefighter Frank Higgins recalled finding body parts amidst the debris, which landed in waist-deep mud. The P-38 pilot was recovered, injured, by a rescue boat launched from Bollin Air Force Base, the Journal reported. The Bolivian ambassador later told reporters the pilot hadn't heard Tigner's warnings because he was managing engine problems aboard the single-seat turbocharged twin-engine fighter, the Journal reported. There have been other crashes near DCA as well: On Jan. 13, 1982, Air Florida Flight 90 crashed into the 14th Street Bridge and sank in the river shortly after takeoff, killing more than 80 people. In that case, authorities blamed a winter storm for lowering visibility and causing ice to accumulate on the 737's wings, hampering its ability to climb. Contributing: Cybele Mayes-Osterman
