Random News and Notes 2 November

On this date:

• 1570 – A tidal wave in the North Sea destroys the sea walls from Holland to Jutland. More than 1,000 people are killed.
• 1772 – The first Committees of Correspondence are formed in Massachusetts under Samuel Adams.
• 1789 – The property of the church in France is taken away by the state.
• 1869 – Sheriff Wild Bill Hickok loses his re-election bid in Ellis County, Kan.
• 1880 – James A. Garfield is elected the 20th president of the United States.

• 1882 – Newly elected John Poe replaces Pat Garrett as sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico Territory.
• 1889 – North Dakota is made the 39th state.
• 1889 – South Dakota is made the 40th state.
• 1892 – Lawmen surround outlaws Ned Christie and Arch Wolf near Tahlequah, Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). It will take dynamite and a cannon to dislodge the two from their cabin.
• 1914 – Russia declares war with Turkey.
• 1917 – Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour writes an important letter expressing the British government’s support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The letter would eventually become known as the Balfour Declaration.
• 1920 – The first radio broadcast in the United States is made from Pittsburgh.
• 1920 – Charlotte Woodward, who signed the 1848 Seneca Falls Declaration calling for female voting rights, casts her ballot in a presidential election.
• 1923 – U.S. Navy aviator H.J. Brow sets new world speed record of 259 mph in a Curtiss racer.

• 1926 – Air Commerce Act is passed, providing federal aid for airlines and airports.
• 1942 – Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower arrives in Gibraltar to set up an American command post for the invasion of North Africa.
• 1943 – The Battle of Empress Augusta Bay in Bougainville ends in U.S. Navy victory over Japan.
• 1947 – Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose flies for the first and last time.
• 1948 – Harry S Truman is elected the 33rd president of the United States.
• 1959 – Charles Van Doren confesses that the TV quiz show 21 is fixed and that he had been given the answers to the questions asked him.
• 1963 – South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem is assassinated.

• 1976 – Jimmy (James Earl) Carter elected the 39th president of the United States.
• 1983 – President Ronald Reagan signs a bill establishing Martin Luther King, Jr., Day.
• 1984 – Serial killer Velma Barfield becomes the first woman executed in the US since 1962.

We start the news in Florida where there was a horrific plane crash yesterday. The Lear 60, bound for the Bahamas from Austin, encountered severe icing and entered into an unrecoverable dive and crashed in a residential neighborhood in Palm Beach County Florida, a few miles from Mar a Lago. While this editor is not an aeronautical engineer, he is (or was, I let my ticket lapse) a licenced pilot and aviation buff. From the images and video available, it appears that the empennage – the “T-tail” – is missing from the aircraft. The empennage is a known failure point on that model of Lear. The tail mainly controls the pitch of the aircraft and without it the plane becomes a dart.

Today’s plane crash in Palm Beach County, Florida is a horrific tragedy
Here’s what we know:
– At 12:50 PM ET, a Learjet 60 crashed in a neighborhood near Cresthaven, FL
– All 9 people on board were killed
– The aircraft departed from Austin, Texas, and was headed to the Bahamas
– The FAA is sending a team to the scene to support the @NTSB’s investigation
Please join me in praying for the families and loved ones of those we lost —

@FAANews & @USDOT are closely monitoring this crash and will share updates as we learn more

The conspiracy theorists are out in full force already. There are dozens of AI “enhanced” images purporting to be of the crash. They aren’t. There are claims it was a drone or missile. It wasn’t. There are claims it was an attack on President Trump. It wasn’t. This was a tragic – and probably preventable – accident.

There is a massive cyberattack occurring in Europe right now. Hackers hit refrigeration systems at supermarkets in Sweden, Belgium, Luxembourg, Estonia, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Finland, causing millions of euros in losses from spoiled food. In Sweden, ICA and Coop stores like those in Sjöbo and Tomelilla saw freezers hacked, delaying openings until 9 a.m., while Belgium’s Delhaize branches reported €100,000 losses at one location.

Similar to an October incident in France, the attacks exploited vulnerabilities in outdated, internet-connected controllers, prompting investigations by national cyber centers and retailers isolating systems to recover. There is no earthly reason to connect temperature controllers for reefers like this to the internet.

Back on October 22, a Charm City teen took a taxi ride from 23-year-old Abubakarr Barrie to what she thought was a carryout spot. Instead the unlicenced ‘cabbie’ drove her to his basement apartment, dragged her inside, choked her, and stabbed her five times while tearing her clothes. She scratched him, hit him with a fire extinguisher, and fled a mile to get help.

Police arrested Barrie two days later; he faces charges of attempted murder, kidnapping, and more, and remains held without bond. A Sierra Leone native who entered the U.S. illegally at the Arizona border in 2023 and released into the interior under the Biden Administration. He was released after prior arrests in NYC despite ICE detainers due to sanctuary policies.

There seems to be widespread power outages across the Northwest portion of DC, centered in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood. A power surge caused the outages that are affecting George Washington University, the World Bank, State Department buildings, and about 1,176 Pepco customers.

DC Fire and EMS responded to smoke reports on H Street NW, where Pepco crews investigated a substation failure near ongoing excavations at 18th and Pennsylvania Avenue.

Couldn’t happen to a better area of DC.