On This Day: September 2

On This Day, for September 2, by Britannica.

Today we’re looking at

• Every frequent flier’s worst nightmare
• The birth of the Internet’s favorite actor
• The life, death, and independence of one of the 20th century’s most significant revolutionaries

On this day in 1998, Swissair flight 111 crashed off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada, killing all 229 people on board.

Swissair flight 111 was a regularly scheduled flight from New York City to Geneva. It was often referred to as the “United Nations airbus.” Many passengers were UN workers shuttling between the organization’s American and European headquarters. At approximately 9:17 PM Atlantic Daylight Time, the plane, a three-engine MD-11, took off from John F. Kennedy International Airport. On board were 14 crew members and 215 passengers.

Less than an hour later a strange smell was detected in the cockpit, and after four minutes smoke appeared but then disappeared. The pilots sent out a “Pan Pan Pan,” which is a signal indicating that an aircraft is experiencing a problem but is in no immediate danger. At the time, the cockpit crew believed there was an issue with the air conditioning system. They were unaware of the rapidly intensifying fire in the ceiling.

After consulting air traffic controllers, it was decided that the airplane would land in Halifax, Nova Scotia, some 56 miles away. At about 10:21 PM the pilots altered course in order to dump fuel. Three minutes later, they declared an emergency as various systems on the plane began to fail and the cockpit began to fill with smoke. Air traffic controllers lost contact shortly afterward. The aircraft hit the water at about 10:31 PM, reportedly almost upside down, and broke apart on impact.

The crash occurred some five miles from Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia, and a number of boaters in the area immediately launched a rescue effort. Soon vessels from the Canadian navy and coast guard also reached the site. Only debris and bodies were recovered; no survivors were found. The plane’s flight recorder was retrieved on September 6, and the cockpit voice recorder came up five days later. Both had been found at a depth of about 180 feet, and their recordings ended about six minutes before the crash, when the plane’s electrical power failed.

By the time salvage efforts ended in 1999, an astounding amount of the aircraft—98 percent of it—had been recovered. The cargo on the plane included valuable diamonds and jewelry as well as Pablo Picasso’s painting Le Peintre, a small piece of which was found.

After an investigation was conducted by the Transportation Safety Board, or TSB, of Canada, it was announced in 2003 that the crash had resulted from faulty wiring that ignited the flammable insulation above the cockpit. Although the final report did not cite which part of the electrical wiring was at fault, a newly installed entertainment system was believed to have played a role in the fire. The crew was cleared of any wrongdoing, and the TSB determined that even if the plane had not changed course to dump fuel, it would still have been unable to reach Halifax.

We apologize for any airplane-induced anxiety this story may have caused you. You should not worry; on average, there’s only about 1 chance in 11 million of dying in a plane crash, and ongoing improvements in technology and procedures tend to increase the safety of air travel over time. It is a sad truth that without making mistakes, we would have no way of improving.

I’m Meg Matthias. Here are Fast Facts for September 2.

On this day in 1966 Salma Hayek, the Mexican American actress known best for her portrayal of Frida Kahlo in the 2002 movie Frida, was born in Coatzacoalcos, Mexico. Hayek also produced the film.

Keanu Reeves also has a birthday today! The Canadian actor, who can be seen traveling through time and dodging bullets in films like Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and The Matrix, can also be seen in memes all over the Internet. Our man of mixed Hawaiian-Anglo names was born on this day in 1964 in Beirut, Lebanon.

English writer J.R.R. Tolkien, who is best known for the inventive fantasy novels The Hobbit, first published in 1937, and The Lord of the Rings, which came out in 1954–1955, died on this day in 1973.

American teacher Christa Corrigan McAuliffe, who was chosen to be the first private citizen in space, was born on this day in 1948; she and her six fellow crew members died when the space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff in 1986.

World War II came to an official end as Japanese Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru and General Umezu Yoshijiro signed Japan's formal surrender aboard the USS Missouri on this day in 1945.

On this day in 2005, American actor Bob Denver, who was perhaps best known for portraying the title character in the hit TV series Gilligan's Island from 1964 to 1967, died in North Carolina.

On this day in 1945, Vietnamese communist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam independent from France. Twenty-four years later, on this day in 1969, the same man, now serving as the president of North Vietnam, died at the age of 79 from heart failure.

The son of a poor country scholar, Ho Chi Minh was brought up in the village of Kim Lien. He had a wretched childhood, but between the ages of 14 and 18 he was able to study at a grammar school in Hue. In 1911, under the name of Ba, he found work as a cook on a French steamship. He was a seaman for more than three years, visiting various African ports and the American cities of Boston and New York. After living in London from 1915 to 1917, he moved to France, where he worked in turn as a gardener, a sweeper, a waiter, a photo retoucher, and an oven stoker.

During the six years that he spent in France, from 1917 to 1923, he became an active socialist under the name “Nguyen the Patriot.” He organized a group of Vietnamese living there and in 1919 addressed an eight-point petition to the representatives of the great powers at the Versailles Peace Conference that concluded World War I. The following year, inspired by the success of the communist revolution in Russia and by Vladimir Lenin’s anti-imperialist doctrine, Ho joined the French communists when they withdrew from the Socialist Party in December 1920.

In December 1924, under the assumed name of Ly Thuy, Ho went to Canton, or Guangzhou, China, a communist stronghold, where he recruited the first cadres of the Vietnamese nationalist movement and organized them into the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth Association, which became famous under the name Thanh Nien. Almost all its members had been exiled from Indochina because of their political beliefs and had gathered together to participate in the struggle against French rule over their country. Thus, Canton became the first home of Indochinese nationalism.

Meeting in Hong Kong in May 1929, members of the Thanh Nien decided to form the Indochinese Communist Party, or PCI. The creation of the PCI coincided with a violent insurrectionary movement in Vietnam. Repression by the French was brutal; Ho himself was condemned to death in absentia as a revolutionary. He sought refuge in Hong Kong, but the French police obtained permission for his extradition from the British colonial authorities there. Luckily for Ho, friends helped him escape, and he reached Moscow via Shanghai.

In 1938 Ho returned to China and stayed for a few months with Mao Zedong in Yan’an. When France was defeated by Germany in 1940, Ho and his lieutenants, plotted to use this turn of events to advance their own cause. About this time he began to use the name Ho Chi Minh (which means “He Who Enlightens”). Crossing the border into Vietnam in January 1941, he and other communist leaders formed a broad nationalist alliance under its leadership called the League for the Independence of Vietnam, which subsequently became known as the Viet Minh.

In 1945 two events occurred that paved the way for the Vietnamese revolutionaries to take power. First, the Japanese completely overran Indochina and imprisoned or executed all French officials, thus removing the French from power in Vietnam. Then, six months later, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Japanese were totally defeated. Thus, the two strongest adversaries of the Viet Minh and Ho Chi Minh were eliminated. Anticipating the defeat of Japan, Ho recognized his opportunity. In the spring of 1945, before Japan’s surrender to the Allies, he contacted U.S. forces and began to collaborate with the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS (a U.S. undercover organization), against the Japanese.

At the time, communist commandos began to move toward Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital. On August 19, after Japan’s surrender, the communists entered Hanoi. Finally, on this day in 1945, before an enormous crowd gathered in Ba Dinh Square in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam independent, using words that were reminiscent of the U.S. Declaration of Independence: “All men are born equal: the Creator has given us inviolable rights, life, liberty, and happiness…!”

Much like the American struggle for independence, the Vietnamese struggle would involve military conflict. In Vietnam’s case, a war began soon after the declaration, and yet another war followed that. Allied treaties intended for Chinese troops to take the place of the occupying Japanese soldiers, but China experienced a communist revolution in 1948, thus radically upsetting the power balance in the region. What’s more, the French were not exactly willing to give up their control of Vietnam. After the first Indochina War ended in 1954, however, Ho Chi Minh agreed to take control of part of the land his forces had seized: northern Vietnam would be led by a communist government, while southern Vietnam would not.
Among 20th-century revolutionaries, Ho waged the longest and costliest battle against the colonial system of the great powers. As a Marxist, he stands with the Yugoslav leader Tito as one of the progenitors of the “national communism” that developed in the 1960s. But he is probably best remembered for his role in the Vietnam War, which followed the two-Vietnams agreement within a few years. Ho Chi Minh did not live to see all of Vietnam become a communist country: he died of a heart attack on this day in 1969 as a long round of negotiations was beginning. He was able to bear witness, however, to the grave crisis he and his followers had helped cause in the national life of their mightiest adversary, the United States of America.

Thanks for listening today. Whether you’re a frequent flier, a Gilligan nut, or a Vietnam vet, there’s always more to read and discover at Britannica.com. Today’s program was written by Emily Goldstein and edited by yours truly. For Britannica, I’m Kurt Heintz. And I’m Meg Matthias.

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