A Brief History On December 24, 1971, a bolt of lightning took down a Lockheed 188A turboprop airliner over Peru, killing all but one of the 82 people aboard. Thunderstorms and lightning are just one of many ways Mother Nature discourages and even puts an end to manned flight by humans in airplanes. Digging Deeper Besides weather, birds have a long history of bringing down airplanes, including the famous “Miracle on the Hudson” event in 2009. Birds are so dangerous to airplanes, that many airports employ a variety of means to keep birds away from runways, from noisemakers and landscaping…
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A Brief History On December 23, 2002, the first known air to air battle between a manned fighter plane and an unmanned aerial drone took place in the sky above Iraq, when an Iraqi MiG-25 fighter jet shot down an American General Atomics MQ-1 Predator. Digging Deeper Far from the manned fighter merely taking out the drone, the high technology dogfight was a real air to air combat, with the drone armed with and firing an air-to-air missile at the Iraqi fighter. Luckily for the Iraqi pilot, the drone’s Stinger missile was allegedly confused by the heat signature of the…
A Brief History On December 20, 1991, the parents of a Palestinian American girl were sentenced to death for the first degree murder of their daughter, a murder committed in the name of “honor,” believing their daughter had shamed the family by living a decadent American style life and having a romantic relationship with an African American man. Digging Deeper Despite the death sentences, the father died in prison six years later while the mother’s sentence was commuted to life in prison. The vast time span between being sentenced to death and actual execution in the US is over 19…
A Brief History On December 19, 2016, Berlin, Germany, was the scene of a horrific mass murder by a frustrated asylum seeker from Tunisia who hijacked a truck and drove it into a crowd of people at a Christmas Market, leaving a dozen dead and scores injured. Digging Deeper While firearms are usually given the most attention when it comes to mass murder, the sad fact is that people with murderous intent have shown surprising ingenuity in the employment of alternate means of committing their heinous acts, such as motor vehicles, bombs, edged weapons, poisons, aircraft, and fire. The perpetrator…
A Brief History On December 18, 1995, a Lockheed L-188 Electra airliner driven by four large turboprop engines crashed in Angola, leaving 141 of the 144 people aboard dead. First flown in 1957 and entering service in 1959, the Electra was the first big turboprop powered airliner made in the USA. Digging Deeper While turboprop aircraft may look like the old fashioned prop planes of the past powered by internal combustion engines, the turboprop variety uses basically a jet engine or turbine engine to provide power, using a lower cost fuel and a lighter weight engine, allowing for lower take…