Top 18 Brendan I. Koerner Quotes

Like many of his fellow skyjackers, 49-year-old Arthur Gates Barkley was motivated by a complicated grievance against the federal government. In 1963, the World War II veteran had been fired as a truck driver for a bakery, after one of his supervisors accused him of harassment.

Particularly during the late 1960s, a large number of American skyjackers earnestly believed that Fidel Castro’s Cuba was an egalitarian, post-racial utopia.

According to tarot historian Gertrude Moakley, the cards‘ fanciful images – from the Fool to Death – were inspired by the costumed figures who participated in carnival parades.

Most of the American skyjackers who fled abroad eventually elected to return to the United States, having tired of life on the lam. These homecomings typically involved prearranged surrenders to the FBI, in the hopes of earning lenient sentences.

According to Ted Watt’s ‘The First Labor Day Parade,’ the September date was chosen because it coincided with a Knights of Labor conference in New York, thus guaranteeing a sizable turnout for the festivities.

The dearth of business activity on the traditional day of rest makes Sunday an ideal time to declare insolvency. Bankruptcy petitions are time-stamped to the minute, instantly dividing a failed company‘s dealings into pre-bankruptcy transactions and post-bankruptcy transactions.

Inventing sources is not a crime in and of itself, although it certainly violates every code of journalistic ethics known to man. A criminal fraud case would require that the reporter‘s deceit had been malicious and resulted in financial gain.

I was vaguely aware that people used to hijack planes to Cuba. But I didn’t know much about how often it happened and what the motives were. I started looking into what was going on back then, and I was blown away by how common hijacking once was.

Back in the NBA’s pre-mask era, ballers with busted noses or orbital bones had two unappealing options: Sit out and heal, or strap on a Michael Myers-looking opaque face shield closely related to that worn by hockey goalies.

You don’t have to be Wilt Chamberlain to get into the Basketball Hall of Fame. If you don’t have a sweet turnaround jumper from 18 feet, the best route to the Hall is fatherhood. Daniel Biasone, aka the ‘father of the 24-second clock,’ made the cut.

Skyjackers had a pretty abysmal success rate – once you commandeered a plane in American airspace, your odds of a happy ending were slim. After the epidemic ended in 1973, what folks tended to remember most about the skyjackers was their futility.

Barkley was the first of many American skyjackers whose primary interest was money; by 1972, the majority of the nation‘s hijackings would involve demands for ransom. Barkley himself was declared incompetent to stand trial in November 1971, at which point he was committed to a psychiatric hospital in Georgia.

In 1887, Oregon became the first state to make Labor Day an official holiday, with Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York quickly following suit.

The most spectacular anti-lava effort in history occurred on the Icelandic island of Heimaey in 1973.

Light rails are too bus-like to impress most commuters, too squished and close to the ground. Monorails, by contrast, strike a chord with travelers. There’s something about the sleek designs, the pillowy rides, and the panoramic views that just enchants.

Monorails have their own fan club, which claims more than 2,500 members who swap monorail toys and trinkets. Modern light rail can claim no such devoted fan base.

Though President Grover Cleveland declared Labor Day a national holiday in 1894, the occasion was first observed on Sept. 5, 1882, in New York City.

In the early years of America’s skyjacking epidemic, the airlines were reluctant to let the FBI attempt to end hijackings by force; they feared that innocents would get caught in the crossfire, thereby sparking a wave of negative publicity.