Histortweet Week in Review - W/E March 27, 2010

SFX: CHURCHBELL] Greetings, History Lovers! Welcome to This Tweet in History, the Week In Review, podcasting to you on tape delay from our North American Studios.

Here are your top stories for the week ending March 27, 2010:

[SFX: SOUND827]World: DATELINE Canary Islands, March 27, 1977 - World's worst airline disaster occurs on the ground in Tenerife: http://bit.ly/cYxSbc
The Back-Story: [SFX:Undertow]A terrorist bombing at the Gran Canaria airport, on Las Palmas, in the Spanish Canary Islands, set off the chain of events that resulted in the worst aviation disaster in history. The bomb caused the Gran Canaria airport to close, and it's incoming traffic, including the ill-fated KLM and PanAm 747s, were diverted to the smaller airport at Los Rodeos. The KLM pilot, seeking to get back in the air before his daily allotment of flight hours expired, interpreted a transmission from the tower as giving him clearance to take off and headed down a runway which he'd been instructed to wait for the big PanAm jet to clear. In the foggy conditions, the two flight crews saw each other too late, and, although the PanAm crew tried to turn aside into a ditch and the KLM crew tried to rush into the air, the KLM jet's lower fuselage tore through the PanAm's upper fuselage. In the end, of the 628 passengers and crew on the airliners, only 61, all of whom had been aboard the PanAm jet, survived. [SFX:]

[SFX: SOUND827]Sports: DATELINE Germany, March 21 1970 - Vinko Bogataj experiences the agony of defeat: http://bit.ly/aUyKf0
The Back-Story: [SFX: Fanfare for the Common Man; I Believe I Can Fly; How Can I Fall; Fame] It was footage that became iconic to a generation, and a catchphrase that worked itself into the American lexicon, as every Saturday, a nation observed Vinko Bogataj's spectacular wipe-out illustrating Jim Mckey's narration as, "The Agony of Defeat." Although the footage that accompanied the rest of the narration was rotated periodically, Bogataj's crash stayed constant. For all of his fame, Bogataj was, in the days before the internet, an anonymous icon in the US, and, in his native Slovenia, totally unaware of his stature and was baffled by an invitation to attend an anniversary celebratio for the program some 20 years later. [SFX:]

[SFX: SOUND827]: In other news: DATELINE San Francisco, March 25 1957 - US Customs, howling mad, seizes imported copies of Ginsberg's opus: http://bit.ly/5yWgaZ
The Back-Story: [SFX:Howl; Me & Julio] Allen Ginsberg's first reading of his masterwork, "Howl" was a defining moment in the genesis of The Beat movement. It is a wide-ranging, breathy, breathless work that both observed and epitomized the experiences of young intellectuals of the generation that was to come of age in the 1960s, Vietnam-war era. In this free-flowing stream of structured chaos, no holds were barred - and therein lay the problem. Seizing on its uncensored - and, in some cases, metaphoric - references to sexuality and homosexuality, the US government declared the poem obscene, seizing imported copies and taking Lawrence Ferlinghetti, whose City Lights publishing company published it dometically, to trial on obscenity charges. Ultimately, the poem was declared not obscene and went on to become the most popular piece produced by The Beat movement. [SFX: ]

[SFX: SOUND827] This week’s birthdays:[SFX: In the Club]

March 21: Composer Johann Sebastian Bach
March 22: Composer Stephen Sondheim
March 23: Director Akira Kurosawa
March 24: Escape Artist Harry Houdini
March 25: Composer Bela Bartok
March 26:Poet Robert Frost, and
March 27: Poet Louis Simpson


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