March 29
...serving up your daily dish.
Nothing like great big chunks of airplane falling out the sky. Which is what happened Monday night, when three pieces of a Fed Ex cargo plane -- the biggest being 5 feet by 8 feet and weighing 100 pounds -- dropped onto the sleeping burg of Nutley. No one was hurt, says the Ledger.
The pieces came from a protective layer of metal called cowling that broke apart from the DC-10's tail engine, one of three engines on the plane, according to FAA and FedEx officials. "It's not a mechanical part of the engine," said FAA spokeswoman Arlene Murray.
FedEx officials declined to release the plane's maintenance records. But FAA records indicate the plane, built in 1978, has had 41 repair problems reported to the federal agency since 1996, none of them major. The last problem reported was on April 14, 2005, when the crew had to make an unscheduled landing after a leaky hydraulic line caused the landing gear to malfunction.
Yesterday's accident was the fifth time since 1991 that airplane debris landed in New Jersey. No one was injured in any of those incidents.
Curiously....
Into our e-mail box last night dropped this little nugget from Reference.com.
Fact of the Day: rocket and cow
In November 1960, an American rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, went off-course and a piece of debris fell in Cuba, killing a cow. The Cuban government gave the cow an official funeral as the victim of "imperialist aggression."
March 29, 2006 in Really Freaking Weird | Permalink
ah...nostalgia for "Donnie Darko."
Posted by: Left Of Center, like Suzanne Vega | Mar 29, 2006 9:14:22 AM
"no one was hurt..."
But what about the trees, Barista? What about the poor trees?
Posted by: walleroo | Mar 29, 2006 9:45:01 AM
The special aeronautical screws ordered by the mechanics didn't come in the FedEx.
Posted by: Right of Center™ | Mar 29, 2006 9:47:29 AM
22 May 1957
A 10 megaton hydrogen bomb was accidentally dropped from a bomber in an uninhabited area near Albuquerque, New Mexico owned by the University of New Mexico. The conventional explosives detonated, creating a 12 foot deep crater 25 feet across in which some radiation was detected.
http://www.lutins.org/nukes.html
Posted by: Right of Center™ | Mar 29, 2006 9:51:37 AM
mmmm maybe since Tom Hanks is sooooo busy making movies, what fell was
Wilsons' Revenge
Posted by: JT | Mar 29, 2006 9:52:54 AM
And there's radiation leaking from Indian Point, but only 1/10 the allowed amount, so no worries mate.
Posted by: crank | Mar 29, 2006 10:02:23 AM
Several years ago a homeowner out west had a blue green "meteorite" come crashing through the roof of his house. As it was of considerable size, he was convinced it was going to have substantial commercial value.
Until it started to melt.
Seems a toilet on some intercontinental flight had overflowed and frozen.
Bummer!
Posted by: poo | Mar 29, 2006 10:03:36 AM
p.s.
the plane in the picture is an Airbus A380 (the new and as yet not in use double decker one).
Here is what a DC-10 looks like.
Posted by: Right of Center™ | Mar 29, 2006 10:11:28 AM
and p.p.s.
Aren't you glad you haven't had a flight like this?
(don't worry no crash, it was safe)
Posted by: Right of Center™ | Mar 29, 2006 10:15:11 AM
"Though no trees were felled during the incident, Nutley residents reported seeing sparks after the part hit a solid object. Upon further inspection, the FAA determined the object on the ground was, in fact, the head of a person who went only by the name Walleroo. Doctors at Clara Maass Hospital in Belleville said the abnormal density of this person's head spared him any severe trauma, and he was treated and released. The man was seen hours later at Nutley Park Shop-Rite on Franklin Avenue stealing candy from toddlers in the parking lot."
Posted by: notteham | Mar 29, 2006 11:08:22 AM
Fortunately the debris missed the trees in the park and fell in the driveway of a typical million-dollar Nutley house.
There was a report of some urchins from Belleville playing soccer by the Mudhole at 3 a.m. Wherever they got a soccer ball at that hour is anyone's guess.
Posted by: Tonoose | Mar 29, 2006 11:30:59 AM
notteham, you're being needlessly cruel again. Not at all witty, just cruel and vapid.
Posted by: cathar | Mar 29, 2006 1:19:54 PM
Oh yeah, that's just intolerable cruelty, cathar. It's not like I told youngsters that they stink at making music or berated people by saying that they know nothing because of their age.
Lighten up, Francis...
Posted by: notteham | Mar 29, 2006 2:17:32 PM
sheesh, why does everyone have on their cranky pants today? To quote the famous drug addict: "can't we all get along?"
Posted by: Iceman | Mar 29, 2006 2:28:04 PM
It's laundry day... the cranky pants were the only thing left in the closet.
Posted by: notteham | Mar 29, 2006 2:29:47 PM
Walleroo has every right to his opinions, notteham. As do you. But you're flailing ceaselessly at him in thread after thread lately. Making it personal, in a sense. (That "crusade" is reserved for anyone vs. Mazie.)
Yet you're really not good enough to make it humorously personal. So you're showing your youthful inexperience (whatever your chronological age, there's an impatience in the tenor of your posts that always gives this away). Walleroo by contrast is a cagey old marsupial. I also wonder why you continue to see yourself as a self-appointed paladin for DOT.
And "Francis?" Where does that come from?
Posted by: cathar | Mar 29, 2006 2:34:41 PM
Cathar,
Are you OK dude? Are you going to have a fit? Should we stick a piece of leather in your mouth?
Posted by: Chillll | Mar 29, 2006 2:38:39 PM
I don't see what the Department of Transportation has to do with any of this.
Walleroo certainly is entitled to his opinions, but the rather snide and aggressive tone of his posts since the drum thread have put he and I directly at odds. I notice that when I engage yourself, csterling, martta, iceman or anyone else I've had rather intense exchanges with, we usually are able to confine those exchanges to the issue at hand and approach each thread on level ground. Walleroo have chosen instead to lay bait from post to post... I'm just reminding them that when you lay bait, make sure the bear's not in the immediate vicinity. Perhaps responding to ugliness with further ugliness isn't the best approach and perhaps I've taken the drum item a bit too seriously. I admit to both of these indiscretions. However, were you not the one who criticized me for not hanging around discussions long enough to engage in pure debate? Now that I have, you imply that my posts have taken on a tenor of impatience. Perhaps this is evidence of my own struggle to find middle ground, but it seems the two critiques are somewhat incongrous.
The "Francis" in question is a reference to the Bill Murray film "Stripes." In this film, a rather intense individual named Francis implores bunkmates in his Army platoon to call him Psycho... or he'll kill them. He tells them not to touch his stuff... or he'll kill them. He tells them not to touch HIM... or he'll kill them. Having heard enough of this, his drill sergeant (Sgt. Hulka) offers him this sage advice: "Lighten up, Francis."
Posted by: notteham | Mar 29, 2006 3:06:58 PM
>>Tonoose, don't tell me. You're from Nutley.
Lasermike, this is something I've never hidden.
If it makes you happy, I live near the Bloomfield line.
Posted by: Tonoose | Mar 29, 2006 3:28:10 PM
