In 1974 346 people die in a plane crash near Paris. The Turkish DC10 flight was loaded with passengers heading for England via France when the plane crashed moments after take off from Paris and scrapped along the ground for a mile before coming to a stop. Many of the passengers were meant to be on a British Airways flight but were transferred due to strike action in England. Among the dead was James Conway who was leader of British trade union and general secretary of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers as well as an Olympic silver medal winner. The crash was the worst in aviation history and believed to have been caused by a cargo door opening after take off, causing a loss in cabin pressure.
In 1959 Pioneer 4 was launched on this day from Cape Canaveral Air Force Base in Florida. Pioneer 4 was the United States’ first spacecraft to ‘flyby’ the moon (the Russians had been the first with the Luna 1 just a few months before). It mission was primarily to take close up photos of the moon but due to trajectory error the craft shot past the moon much faster than planned and the sensor on the camera failed to trigger. Despite this the probe did gather useful information on radiation and provided excellent practice for tracking objects in space. The probe was tracked using an onboard radio until the 6th of March 1959 and had travelled 655,000 miles making it the furthest man made object to be tracked in space at the time.
In 1952 a New York State Law that forbids those with communist beliefs from teaching in public schools was upheld by the US Supreme Court today. Called the “Feinberg Law” it forbids anyone from the teaching profession who called for the overthrow of Government and was made specifically against communism. Groups of parents and teachers challenged the law and the case was taken to the Supreme Court. The law was upheld with a vote of 6 for and 3 against.
In 1284 The Statute of Rhuddlan (sometimes known as the statute of Wales) was enacted on this day. The statute was King Edward I of England’s way of establishing English law in Wales after his conquest of the Principality of Wales in 1283.
