This is absolutely terrible on both the human and the economic level, and for the Russian aviation industry specifically: …[A] a Sukhoi SuperJet-100, the first completely new post-Soviet jetliner, went missing during a promotional tour in Indonesia. The plane is … Continue reading →
For the 100th anniversary of the sinking of Titanic, I’ve written a piece that appears at the online version of the Weekly Standard. Here’s the link—but if you want to comment, you’ll have to do so here, since the WS … Continue reading →
Here’s a poignant photo of a man named Greg Cook hugging his dog Coco after his East Limestone, Alabama home was destroyed by a recent tornado and Coco was found inside the ruins: It’s one of many photos in this … Continue reading →
I’ve got an article up today at PJ with some background on the old (actually, not all that old) “women and children first” rule in maritime disasters. Please click on the link and read the article first, and then come … Continue reading →
It seems as though every ship disaster has at least one goat and at least one hero. Titanic had many self-sacrificing heroes, and it had Bruce Ismay as the main goat, although there were others. Captain Edward Smith was both … Continue reading →
Here’s a rather risky method of marriage therapy. But it seems to have worked—for now: Australian miner Rob Elcombe and his wife, Tracey Gunn, told Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper they booked a spot on the Concordia as a last ditch … Continue reading →
…sounds much worse than I’d originally thought. The captain’s been arrested and is being investigated for possible manslaughter and abandoning ship. Passengers report that there was delay in launching the lifeboats, and general chaos. Three people are reported dead and … Continue reading →
Officials think they’ve found the cause of that horrific Christmas house fire I wrote about a few days ago: A Christmas morning fire that killed a couple and three of their grandchildren was accidentally started by fireplace embers that had … Continue reading →
This story is horrific: A [mother] climbed onto the roof of her burning house and tried to smash the windows of her daughters’ bedrooms in a bid to save them from the flames ravaging her home. Madonna Badger, 47, and … Continue reading →
When my son was little in the 80s and early 90s, the whole family used to love the TV show “Rescue 911.” It was one of my guilty pleasures. A reality show that featured staged reenactments of actual 911 calls … Continue reading →
…fascinating, but extremely chilling reading: what happened aboard Air France 447. And here’s an article written two years earlier by the same author, long before the black boxes for Air France 447 had been found. In it, he speculates on … Continue reading →
Hurricane Irene may be gone, but its aftermath isn’t. And although the effects were nowhere near as bad as originally predicted, for some communities they are still very bad indeed. Rivers are still rising in New Jersey. And landlocked Vermont—of … Continue reading →