Global Air Referral Service - Archive of Home Page Links

Ferry Trips

Ferry Pilots

Archives: Most Recent 44 43 42 41 40 39 38 37 36 35 34 33 32 31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Favorites Bold Tragedies Politics Custer

The modern generation has been programmed to think the destruction in New York on September 11, 2001 was the most terrible event ever, but it wouldn't even make the list of worst human tragedies. If you know of a "Forgotten Tragedy", please email and tell me about it.

The secret dress rehearsal in England for D-Day turned deadly when machine guns firing overhead started to sink in the sand, and then came the ambush by German E-boats.

The National Hurricane Center says the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane was the strongest to hit the United States in the past 100 years. The story of the World War One veterans who were sent to work on ''New Deal'' construction projects in the Florida Keys, and at least 250 of them died in this storm that arrived with very little notice.

People in Galveston knew that there was a storm in the Gulf of Mexico. It was reported in the newspaper but they didn't know where the storm would make landfall.

The ''Wayback Machine'' website captured the CNN homepage on September 11, 2001.

Sherman Skolnick, a private investigator, was convinced that the crash was a deliberate act targeting people on the plane who he thought were connected to Watergate. Skolnick developed a convoluted theory involving not just a simple hit by the Nixon administration, but also a competition between oil companies, the mob, secret documents, a robbery on board the plane, and the in-flight cyanide poisoning of the airline captain.

Soldiers fighting on Ramree Island in 1945 faced a more treacherous foe than any human enemy-the saltwater crocodile. A strategic battle for control of the isle, located just north of Rangoon, Burma, resulted in crocodile attacks on Japanese troops in a mangrove swamp. The exact number of men killed by crocodiles remains a mystery, but British survivors of the battle estimated that about 1,000 Japanese were attacked by the giant reptiles.

Thousands of Rwandans have turned away from Catholicism, angered and saddened by the complicity of church officials in the 100-day genocide, in which more than 500,000 minority Tutsis were killed by Hutu extremists. What did this holy man do? He locked 2,000 people inside of a church and then burned it down.

As the Hindenburg prepared to dock in Lakehurst, New Jersey, reporter Herbert Morrison of WLS Radio in Chicago reported the event live to millions, including my father in Pipestone, Minnesota.

1937 Newsreel Coverage

Ferry pilot Jim Willess is missing on an RV-6 flight from Mohave, California to Richmond, Virginia. Jim is a retired UAL pilot with over 25,000 hours in all types of aircraft. Click for more.

Jim Willess Found

On September 1, 1983, the Russians shot down Korean Airlines Flight 007, killing all 269 on board, claiming it was on a spying mission.

On December 12, 1985, the DC-8 transport plane crashed shortly after a re-fuelling stop leaving 248 American soldiers and an air crew of 8 all dead, Canada's worst aviation disaster.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, flight of a passenger airliner that crashed and burned in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014. All 298 people on board, most of whom were citizens of the Netherlands, died in the crash. A Dutch inquiry determined that the aircraft was shot down by a Russian-made surface-to-air missile.

At 8:32 AM, May 18, 1980, for the first time in nearly a century, Mount St. Helens erupted.

About this photo

The fledgling pharmaceutical industry, sponsored by the �Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research�, had something they never had before � a large supply of human test subjects. Supplied by the U.S. military�s first draft, the test pool of subjects ballooned to over 6 million men.

On Dec. 29, 1890, American soldiers slaughtered more than 350 Lakota men, women and children in an event known to history books as the Battle at Wounded Knee.

Mao Zedong, founder of the People's Republic of China, qualifies as the greatest mass murderer in world history. Between 1958 and 1962, at least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death in China. The worldwide death toll of the Second World War was 55 million.

In 1998 the Houston Chronicle marked the 35th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. The article is no longer on the paper's website, but the ''wayback machine'' saved it.

Intensified with the release in 1992 of Oliver Stone's movie ''JFK'', many believed a New Zealand paper knew everything about the assassination almost before it happened, including everything about Lee Harvey Oswald.

From 2007: The Kennedy Assassination still captures the interest of those that believe it was a conspiracy.

On June 24, 1950, Northwest Flight 2501 disappeared over Lake Michigan and was never found. The US coast guard found the aircraft log book floating in the water, and fragments and body parts were found in the area but they could not find the aircraft wreckage.

In 1945, Churchhill and Roosevelt handed over all the captured Cossacks to the Red Army, men, women and children, knowing full well the fate that awaited them.

One of the greatest inland waterways disasters in the history of the United States took place in Chicago, Illinois July 24, 1915, when the steamship Eastland capsized with a loss of nearly 850 lives. Chicago�s working poor were expecting a day in luxury. They instead faced a horrific calamity on Lake Michigan, taking more passenger lives than the Titanic or the Lusitania.

Chicago also happened to endure a terrible fire that same day, but the Peshtigo, Wisconsin tragedy, taking many more lives, gradually slipped into obscurity.

The Ringmaster urged calm, but the 7000 spectators stampeded, adding to the death and casualty toll.

As Iranian Airlines Flight 655 was climbing to 14,000 feet, the USS Vincennes, commanded by Captain William Rogers, fired two surface-to-air missiles.

The forgotten tragedy of the Cap Arcona, the last major indignity of the Holocaust and one of history�s worst maritime disasters.

A school board member named Andrew Kehoe, upset over property taxes, killed his wife, all his farm animals, chopped down all his trees, then drove to town and wired the school with dynamite and set it off on the morning of May 18, 1927. Kehoe�s actions killed 45 people, 38 of whom were children.

The 1916 Somme offensive was one of the largest and bloodiest battles of the First World War (1914-18). The opening day of the attack, 1 July 1916, saw the British Army sustain 57,000 casualties, the bloodiest day in its history. The campaign finally ended in mid-November after an agonising five-month struggle that failed to secure a breakthrough.

The bodies of over 4,000 Confederates who died of miserable conditions at Camp Douglas were moved to a mass grave called ''Confederate Mound'' in 1867.

In ''The Iron Cage'' by Nigel Cawthorne, the author exposes Britain and America�s betrayal of its own soldiers who ended up as pawns in a game over which they had no control. They were never mentioned as a group and have all but disappeared from the pages of history.

The Sultana was a Mississippi River steamboat paddle wheeler destroyed in an explosion on April 27, 1865, the greatest maritime disaster in United States history.

The devastating fire aboard the SS Morro Castle was a catalyst for improved shipboard fire safety.

After the bombing was over, 26,000 buildings lay in wreckage, and 25,000 men, women and children lay dead in the street or buried under the rubble.

In December, 1937, Japanese forces captured the Chinese capital of Nanking. What followed was the killing of over 200,000 men, women, and children.

The price of victory in France at Vimy Ridge was high: 10,500 casualties, including 3,598 dead.

Most victims lost their life not during the war but following the ending of the hostilities in the course of expulsion, in forced marches and transports, in captivity or perished by malnutrition, cold or died violently under allied occupation.

The Katyn Massacre, in which 22,000 Polish army officers, policemen, and civil servants were murdered by the Soviets was probably the most senseless of Stalin's crimes.

In 1943, the Japanese destroyer Akikaze removed European and Malay nationals from some of the New Guineas islands in the Bismarck Sea. On the execution platform, they were faced toward the bow, suspended by their hands by means of a hook attached to a pulley, and at the order of the commander, executed by machine gun and rifle fire and dumped into the ocean.

The Rape of Nanking, where 250,000 unarmed Chinese PoWs were massacred in 1937, is relatively well known. Less well known are other atrocities against the Chinese civilians during the Japanese occupation of China. Between the 5th and the 12th May,1943 there was a massacre of Chinese civilians at Chingjiao, regarded as the second worst in the whole war, that went on for four days, and 30,000 civilians were killed.

On November 26, 1943, 1,138 men, including 1,015 U.S. soldiers, died when the HMT Rohna was attacked and sunk in the Mediterranean. The event was kept secret from the American people.

By capturing the Gallipoli Peninsula, the Allies hoped to threaten the Ottoman capital, Constantinople (now Istanbul) and knock the Turks out of the World War.

The bombing was generally considered unnecessary, as the war in Europe was almost over. Germans pause to remember the 35,000 victims every February.

As well as the estimated two million rapes in Germany, there were between 70,000 and 100,000 in Vienna and anywhere from 50,000 to 200,000 in Hungary, as well as thousands in Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia.

The partition of India was the largest mass migration in history of some 10 million. As many as one million civilians died in the accompanying riots and fighting.

Japanese soldiers, infuriated with the Chinese for helping Doolittle's B-25 Raiders escape, retaliated by murdering an estimated 250,000 Chinese civilians.

The 141st and 143rd Infantry regiments suffered 2,128 casualties in 48 hours, including 155 killed, 1,052 wounded and 921 missing or captured.

Most people know about the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, but few know about the terrible loss of life when incendiary bombs were dropped on Tokyo.

Many ships have sunk with horrible loss of life, but never have so many lives been lost with a single ship.

The influenza epidemic was so severe that the average life span in the US was depressed by 10 years.

August 26, 1883 would mark the last 24 hours on earth for over 36,000 people, and the destruction of hundreds of coastal villages and towns.

Of the estimated 1,800 American prisoners of war aboard the Arisan Maru, only 8 survived, 3 were recaptured, and 5 were rescued by Chinese fishermen.

according to meticulous German records, of the 40,000 killed, the body count was 13,000 men, 21,000 women and over 8,000 children.

Archives: Most Recent 44 43 42 41 40 39 38 37 36 35 34 33 32 31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Favorites Bold Tragedies Politics Custer

For more information, call us at 763-389-9399.