100 years ago, the Great Molasses Flood happened in Boston. The dead ranged from two ten year-old childen to a 78 year-old messenger.
Ten years ago, the "Miracle on the Hudson" happened when the pilots of USAir flight 1549 ditched the airplane in the Hudson River after both engines were shelled from ingesting geese. There were no fatalities, other than the geese.
I suspect that the pilot, Chesley Sullenberger, has probably been somewhat uncomfortable with the "hero pilot" appellation. For one thing, the days of "the captain is a god" have long passed for all American (and most Western) airlines. The pilots are a team. Jeffrey Skiles, the First Officer, deserves as much credit as Sullenberger. So do the flight attendants, who got everyone out alive. In fact, the person who suffered the worst injury was a flight attendant. (Sullenberger recognizes this and mentions them almost every time he can.)
The fact that nobody died also has a lot to do with the captains of the ferries and other boats that went to the floating airplane and got everyone off the airplanes wings and the rafts. It was a cold day; without those rescues, people would have died of hypothermia.
There were a lot of people who responded to save lives that day.
A Short Explanation
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3 comments:
Read a book on the molasses flood once. It was more about the arms industry than a rarely-used ingredient in the larder. Greed was the cause of an overloaded storage tank, the failure of which surprised no one. Greed and a lack of industry regulation.
That's part of the paradise the MAGAs would create, with no remaining industry regulation.
Rarely used in the larder, OK, but that's where the rum comes from!
Yes, rum, but also was used to produce a form of alcohol that was useful in war industries.
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