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March 1, 2012

Reliving NYC's First Big Plane Crash

Micheline Maynard, New York Times

March 1, 1962, was the first sunny day in New York in weeks. People from across the city were streaming onto Broadway for a ticker-tape parade to honor the astronaut John Glenn.

 

But the city’s mood was spoiled shortly after 10 o’clock on that Thursday morning by the crash of American Airlines Flight 1 into Jamaica Bay. The accident happened after the plane took off from Idlewild Airport, killing all 95 people aboard.

 

On Sunday night, the crash was the centerpiece of an episode of “Mad Men,” the series on the AMC network that is set in the 1960s and explores the lives and loves of the staff at the Sterling Cooper Agency.

 

In the episode, one of the victims of the Boeing 707 accident is the father of one of the “Mad Men.” Within...

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TAGGED: New York, Air Disaster

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