On This Date In History

On December 16, 1773, in Boston Harbor, a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians board three British tea ships and dump 342 chests of tea into the harbor.
The midnight raid, popularly known as the “Boston Tea Party,” was in protest of the British Parliament’s Tea Act of 1773, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and granting it a virtual monopoly on the American tea trade. The low tax allowed the East India Company to undercut even tea smuggled into America by Dutch traders, and many colonists viewed the act as another example of taxation tyranny.
When three tea ships, the Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver, arrived in Boston Harbor, the colonists demanded that the tea be returned to England. After Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused, Patriot leader Samuel Adams organized the “tea party” with about 60 members of the Sons of Liberty, his underground resistance group. The British tea dumped in Boston Harbor on the night of December 16 was valued at some $18,000.
Parliament, outraged by the blatant destruction of British property, enacted the Coercive Acts, also known as the Intolerable Acts, in 1774. The Coercive Acts closed Boston to merchant shipping, established formal British military rule in Massachusetts, made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in America, and required colonists to quarter British troops. The colonists subsequently called the first Continental Congress to consider a united American resistance to the British.

 

 

Boston Tea Party Commemorative Stamps - 1873 - 8 cents

 
On December 16, 1960, two airplanes collide over New York City, killing 134 people on the planes and on the ground. The improbable mid-air collision was the only such accident to have occurred over a major city in the U.S.
It was a snowy morning in New York when United Airlines Flight 826, a Douglas DC-8 from Chicago was heading for Idlewild Airport (now John F. Kennedy International Airport) in southern Queens. At the same time, TWA Flight 266, a Lockheed-1049 Super Constellation from Dayton, Ohio, was heading to LaGuardia Airport in northern Queens. Due to the weather, the United flight was put into a holding pattern. When the pilot miscalculated the location of the pattern, the plane came directly into the path of the TWA flight.
One hundred twenty-eight people in total were on the two planes. Eleven-year-old passenger Stephen Baltz described the scene: “It looked like a picture out of a fairy book. Then all of a sudden there was an explosion. The plane started to fall and people started to scream. I held on to my seat and then the plane crashed.” Baltz initially survived the crash, but died from his injuries the following afternoon. All of the other people on the planes also died.
The TWA plane fell onto Miller Field, a military airfield on Staten Island. The United flight, missing its right engine and part of a wing, came down in the middle of the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. It narrowly missed St. Augustine’s Academy and hit an apartment building and the Pillar of Fire Church. Dozens of other buildings caught fire in the resulting explosion. Mrs. Robert Nevin, who was sitting in a top floor apartment when the plane crashed into her building, later said “The roof caved in and I saw the sky.”
Six people on the ground died when the plane crashed, including Wallace Lewis, the 90-year-old caretaker of the church, and two men who were selling Christmas trees nearby. Christmas presents carried by the plane’s passengers were strewn all over the streets. Firefighting efforts went on for nearly 72 hours because of the multiple fires.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSRbDP9ohIw&t=27s

 

 

United Airlines Flight 826, a Douglas DC-8 was a flight that was on approach to New York from Chicago on December 16, 1960 with 84 passengers and crew on board. Also in the area was TWA Flight 266, a Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation was a flight between Dayton, Ohio and New York with a stopover in Columbus with 44 passengers and crew on board. The Crash: At 10:21am, United Airlines Flight 826 notified its company radio operator that one of the VOR receivers wasn't working, however ATC wasn't aware of this. This made it harder for the United plane to fly in instrumental conditions. ATC then cleared Flight 826 to circle the Preston holding point at 5,000 feet, but the plane overshot it as it was travelling to fast and breached its assigned airspace. The DC-8 was now off course and descending 3,600 feet a minute. It then collided with TWA Flight 266 which was flying in the vicinity. The wing of the DC-8 tore through the Constellation's fuselage causing the plane to break up in mid-air and crash killing everyone on board. The DC-8, suffering severe damage to its wing managed to fly for a few minutes before the plane crashed, also killing everyone on board. There was initially a survivor on Flight 826, but the person died the next day. In total, 134 were killed including 6 people on the ground.