Empire State Building Incident
On Saturday, 28 July 1945, at 0940 (while flying in thick fog), a USAAF B-25D crashed into the north side of the Empire State Building, hitting between the 79th and 80th floor. A total of 14 people were killed; 11 in the building, along with Colonel William Smith and the other two occupants of the bomber. Betty Lou Oliver, an elevator attendant, survived the impact and a subsequent uncontrolled descent with the elevator. It was partly because of this incident that Towers 1 and 2 of the World Trade Center were designed to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707 aircraft (although the aircraft that hit the towers on 11 September 2001 had significantly higher masses and were traveling at substantially higher speeds).
Read more about this topic: North American B-25 Mitchell
Famous quotes containing the words empire, state, building and/or incident:
“Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.””
—Winston Churchill (1874–1965)
“Across Parker Avenue from the fort is the Site of the Old Gallows, where 83 men “stood on nothin’, a-lookin’ up a rope.” The platform had a trap wide enought to “accommodate” 12 men, but half that number was the highest ever reached. On two occasions six miscreants were executed. There were several groups of five, some quartets and trios.”
—Administration in the State of Arka, U.S. public relief program. Arkansas: A Guide to the State (The WPA Guide to Arkansas)
“An island always pleases my imagination, even the smallest, as a small continent and integral portion of the globe. I have a fancy for building my hut on one. Even a bare, grassy isle, which I can see entirely over at a glance, has some undefined and mysterious charm for me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)