A Brief History On November 14, 1910, self-taught aviator Eugene Ely took off from the deck of the USS Birmingham, near Norfolk, Virginia. Piloting a Curtiss Pusher airplane, Ely made history by becoming the first person to take off from a ship in an airplane. Digging Deeper The temporary runway constructed over the front portion of the cruiser was only 83 feet long, barely long enough to allow the plane to take off. In fact, on the historic flight, the wheels of the primitive plane dragged in the water and Ely’s goggles were covered with spray! After the brush with…
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A Brief History On November 11, 2014, a horrible bus crash occurred in the Sindh province of Pakistan. Known as the “2014 Khairpur bus crash,” the accident happened when the bus collided with a truck, killing 56 people. For perspective, the deadliest bus crash in US history was the 1963 Salinas Valley Drunk Driver Train Crash in California when a jury rigged truck/bus was hit by a train, killing 32 people. Some other deadly bus wrecks include: Digging Deeper The Hida River Bus Crash of 1968, when two buses were swept off the road by a landslide during a typhoon,…
A Brief History On November 10, 1975, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior, taking the 29 men aboard to a watery grave. The most famous shipwreck on the Great Lakes, largely because of the smash hit song by Gordon Lightfoot, the Edmund Fitzgerald is not the only notable casualty of the Great Lakes, so today we list a couple of those other freshwater disasters. Digging Deeper SS Leecliffe Hall sank in 1964 with three deaths after colliding with a Greek freighter in the St. Lawrence Seaway. The 730 foot long, 18,071 ton ship was hauling 24,500 tons of…
A Brief History On November 1, 1982, Honda Motor Company of Japan started making cars in the United States. The gasoline shortages of 1973 and 1979 pushed American drivers into the seats of imported cars that got better gas mileage than American land yachts, and with better quality for good measure. Digging Deeper Honda took advantage of this trend by opening a manufacturing plant in Marysville, Ohio, starting with their Civic subcompact car. Honda’s American growth has been spectacular and now, four decades later, 2/3 of their vehicles are built in the US at a total of 12 automotive plants…
A Brief History On October 27, 1962, US Air Force Major Rudolf Anderson was shot down and killed while flying his U-2 spy plane over Cuba. Digging Deeper The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was a face-off between the US and the USSR over the Soviets stationing nuclear missiles in Cuba, close to the American mainland. After two weeks of negotiations and nearly causing a nuclear war, national leaders reached a deal where the Soviets would remove nukes from Cuba and the US would remove nuclear missiles from Turkey and possibly Italy. Despite debate about taking drastic military action…
