January 15 in History

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The “Miracle on the Hudson,” in which the crew of a US Airways passenger jet, Flight 1549, safely glided the plane to a water landing in the Hudson River after it lost power from its engines after striking geese during takeoff, took place seven years ago today. All passengers and crew survived.

The crash has since been memorialized in a film Sully, directed by Clint Eastwood, and the airplane itself is now on exhibit at the Carolinas Aviation Museum.
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A Missed Opportunity to Help Shawkan?

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

On Tuesday, eight TDs from the Dáil Éireann, Ireland’s lower house in its legislature, visited a young man who was arrested in Egypt in August 2013 and has been held in prison ever since: Ibrahim Halawa. The TDs also met with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who told them that he could not intervene on behalf of the young prisoner, but that upon the conclusion of his trial Halawa would be free to return to Ireland.

Ibrahim Halawa is a citizen of Ireland, born there in 1995 and raised there. His family is Egyptian, and he and his sisters traveled to Egypt in the summer of 2013 and took part in the protests riling that nation that summer. The previous president, Mohamed Morsi, had been kicked out of office in a coup, and everyday citizens who support democracy joined with Morsi’s supporters and with actual members of his political party, the Muslim Brotherhood, in the street protests.
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January 14 in History

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Today, also known as The Today Show, NBC’s several-hour morning news program, debuted 65 years ago … um, on this date.

The show was created by Sylvester Weaver, who also created programs with counterpart names: Tonight, which also lives on, and Tomorrow, which lives on in the spirit of late-late-night talk programs.
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