The Boeing 747-131 carried registration N93119 and it was 15 years old. In those 15 years, it completed 16,869 flights and was in the air 93,000 hours. Twenty years ago today, it landed uneventfully at JFK Airport from Athens, Greece. That was flight 16,869.

Later that same day, as the sun was setting, it took off for its 16,870th flight. It was TWA Flight 800 to Rome, Italy, and it exploded at about 15,000 feet altitude over the Atlantic Ocean just south of Smith Point on Long Island. Everyone on board was killed, 212 passengers and 18 crew.

A sanctuary and park, the TWA Flight 800 International Memorial, was built and dedicated next to Smith Point County Park in 2004. It is depicted at top.
Read More

“I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”—J. Robert Oppenheimer, paraphrasing the Bhagavad Gita after witnessing the Trinity test.

The U.S. Army detonated “The Gadget,” its first nuclear weapon, at White Sands, New Mexico, on this date in 1945. (Photo above.) The director of Los Alamos Laboratory, J. Robert Oppenheimer, gave the project the code name “Trinity,” in what he thought an appropriate literary reference to a line from John Donne: “Batter my heart, three person’d God.”
Read More

The first tweet was sent out on March 21, 2006, by one of the founders of Twitter (which they were spelling “twttr”), Jack Dorsey:

just setting up my twttr

— Jack (@jack) March 21, 2006

The company opened to the public a few months later, on July 15, 2006, 10 years ago today.

* * * *
Six years ago today my life changed. I’m glad for that. (Photo above.)
Read More