AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIGHT 11

American Airlines Flight 11, from Boston, Massachusetts, to Los Angeles, California, crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center with 92 people on board.

 

CREW

John Ogonowski, 52, of Dracut, Massachusetts, was the pilot of Flight 11. He lived on a 150-acre farm north of Boston. He is survived by his wife, Margaret, and three daughters, Laura, 16; Caroline, 14; and Mary, 11. A lifelong aviation buff, he joined the Air Force after graduating from college and flew planes at the close of the Vietnam War. He joined American Airlines in 1979.

First Officer Thomas McGuinness, 42, of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was Flight 11’s co-pilot. He is survived by his wife, Cheryl, and a 14-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter. He was active in Bethany Church in Greenland, New Hampshire, friends and neighbors told The Boston Globe. Rick DeKoven, a church administrator, described him as “a devoted family man.”

Barbara Arestegui, 38, was a flight attendant from Marstons Mills, Massachusetts.

Jeffrey Collman was a flight attendant.

Sara Low, 28, was a flight attendant from Batesville, Arkansas.

Karen Martin was a flight attendant.

Kathleen Nicosia …

In Notes and Queries “…there is an account of an ancient copper seal, about the size of a penny, found in chalk, at a depth of from five to six feet, near Bredenstone, England. The design upon it is said to be of a monk kneeling before a virgin and child: a legend upon the margin is said to be:’St.Jordanis Monachi Spaldingie.’ I don’t know about that. It looks very desirable —undesirable to us.” (page 130) In Scientific American appeared a newspaper story that related that ” that about the first of June, 1851, a powerful blast near Dorchester, Mass., cast out from a bed of solid rock a bell-shaped vessel of an unknown metal: floral designs inlaid with silver; ‘art of some cunning workman.'”…

 

Once upon a time, Axel Heilberg Island was a very strange place. Located within the Arctic Circle north of mainland Canada, a full 8/9ths of the way from the equator to the North Pole, the uninhabited Canadian island is far enough north to make Iceland look like a great spot for a winter getaway, and today there’s not much to it beyond miles of rocks, ice, a few mosses, and many fossils. The fossils tell of a different era, though, an odd time about 45 million years ago when Axel Heilberg, still as close to the North Pole as it is now, was covered in a forest of redwood-like trees known as metasequoias.

Axel Heilberg’s forests probably received equatorial water and warmth from a prehistoric weather pattern unlike anything in existence today. Other challenging mysteries remain, including how a forest could develop given the sunlight it would receive on Axel Heilberg. Because of its closeness to the North Pole both now and in the time of the redwoods, Axel Heilberg spends four months of each year in continuous sunlight and four months of each year in continuous darkness.

We …

A vase was found in precambian rock (534 million years old) in 1851 in Dorchester, Mass., U.S.A. The June 1851 issue of Scientific American reported that an explosive charge blew a metal vase out of solid rock in Dorchester, Massachusetts. The described the finding: “On putting the two parts together it formed a bell-shaped vessel, 4 1/2 inches high, 6 1/2 inches at the base, 2 1/2 inches at the top and about an eighth of an inch in thickness. The body of this vessel resembles zinc in color, or a composition metal in which there is a considerable portion of silver. On the sides there are six figures of a flower, a bouquet, beautifully inlaid with pure silver, and around the lower part of the vessel, a vine, or wreath, inlaid also with silver. The chasing, carving and inlaying are exquisitely done by the art of some cunning craftsman. This curious and unknown vessel was blown out of solid pudding stone, fifteen feet below the surface.” The editor suggests the vessel may have been made by Tubal-Cain, the Biblical father of metallurgy. Tubal-Cain is found in Gen. 4:22 (before …