January 13, 1982: Air Florida Flight 90, at the beginning of a flight from Washington National Airport to Tampa, crashes into the 14th Street Bridge, over an icy Potomac River. There are 78 people killed.
It was in a snowstorm, in the middle of one of the Northeast's worst cold snaps in recent memory, and the plane was not sufficiently de-iced. So it was due to pilot error. The fact that President Ronald Reagan had fired the nation's air-traffic controllers the preceding August, and that they had been replaced by less-experienced people, had nothing to do with it.
Nevertheless, Reagan had fired the air-traffic controllers. And National Airport was the airport closest to the White House. Did the public turn on Reagan for this?
No. Many people turned on him because his stupid tax cut had made the national economy significantly worse. But it was understood that his firing of the air-traffic controllers had nothing to do with the Air Florida crash.
Still, it was in very bad taste for a Republican-controlled Congress, in 1998, to rename the facility Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. But when have Congressional Republicans ever been accused of doing something in good taste?
Historian Henry Graff once compared the luck that Reagan had to that of his predecessor, Jimmy Carter: He said of the firing of the air-traffic controllers, "If Carter had done it, there would have been a crash the next week."
Air Florida went out of business on July 3, 1984, 4 months before Reagan was re-elected.
*
January 13, 1982 was a Wednesday. English actress Ruth Wilson was born on this day.
There were 6 games played in the NBA:
* The Milwaukee Bucks beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 111-107 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia.
* The Boston Celtics beat the Atlanta Hawks, 116-95 at the Boston Garden.
* The San Diego Clippers beat the Dallas Mavericks, 105-102 at the Reunion Arena in Dallas.
* The Kansas City Kings beat the Cleveland Cavaliers, 117-104 at the Kemper Arena (now the Hy-Vee Arena) in Kansas City.
* The Golden State Warriors beat the Denver Nuggets, 143-128 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.
* And the Seattle SuperSonics beat the Indiana Pacers, 106-86 at the Seattle Center Coliseum.
And there were 7 games played in the National Hockey League:
* The New York Rangers beat the Minnesota North Stars, 2-0 at the Metropolitan Sports Center in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.
* The Edmonton Oilers and the Washington Capitals played to a tie, 6-6 at the Capital Centre in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland. Landover is on the opposite side of the District of Columbia from the crash site, and there was no consideration of postponing the game.
* The Buffalo Sabres beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 6-2 at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.
* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Colorado Rockies, 2-1 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. The Rockies became the New Jersey Devils the next season. In 1993, a baseball expansion team named the Colorado Rockies began play.
* The Quebec Nordiques beat the St. Louis Blues, 4-2 at the St. Louis Arena.
* The Winnipeg Jets beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, 6-1 at the Winnipeg Arena.
* And the Vancouver Canucks beat the Calgary Flames, 5-1 at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver.
No comments:
Post a Comment