Speaker 1: It was a clear, golden New England evening on October fourth,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty. The sun was ready to set over the
Speaker 1: yachts anchored in Winthrop Harbor in Boston. The residents of
Speaker 1: Winthrop were just sitting down to their suppers when an
Speaker 1: explosion that sounded like a sonic boom interrupted the calm.
Speaker 1: The deafening noise was the sound of a plane slamming
Speaker 1: into the sea seconds after takeoff from Boston's Logan Airport.
Speaker 1: All but ten of the seventy two aboard Eastern Airlines
Speaker 1: Flight three seventy five were killed. You would never imagine
Speaker 1: that William Shakespeare had anything to do with this tragedy,
Speaker 1: but believe it or not, the disaster can be traced
Speaker 1: back to one of the Bard's most obscure plays, one
Speaker 1: written over three hundred and sixty years earlier, the one
Speaker 1: that makes reference to a particular bird Every gun Ship Start. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm Sean Braswell and welcome to The Thread, a podcast
Speaker 1: from Azzi Media where we examine the interlocking lives and
Speaker 1: events of history. This past season, we pulled the thread
Speaker 1: on the murder of John Lennon. Season two will debut
Speaker 1: early next year, but we'd like to share some bonus episodes.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, we call them many threads. Here's the first,
Speaker 1: about a nineteen sixty aviation disaster, actually sparked by William Shakespeare.
Speaker 1: It's hard to go a day in an English speaking
Speaker 1: country without encountering a word or phrase that originated with
Speaker 1: England's famous sixteenth century bard wild goose chase. That's Shakespeare.
Speaker 1: Love is blind Shakespeare. It's Greek to me break the
Speaker 1: ice kill with kindness all Shakespeare. But it's not just
Speaker 1: his creative word play that captures our imagination. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: what he references birds. For example, it is not yet
Speaker 1: near day. It was the nightingale, and not the law
Speaker 1: that appears the fearful hollow of thine ear nightly she
Speaker 1: sings on yon, pomegranitree, believe me love, it was the nightingale,
Speaker 1: was the law the herald of the moon? No nightingale.
Speaker 1: But there's one reference to a starling in all of
Speaker 1: Shakespeare's plays. It's in a play you probably didn't read
Speaker 1: in school, The Obscure Henry the fourth Part one. The
Speaker 1: reference is found in the first act, scene three. A
Speaker 1: fiery nobleman named Hotspur is upset with King Henry because
Speaker 1: he refused to ransom his brother in law, Mortimer, who
Speaker 1: was captured in a battle with the Scots. Hotspur promises
Speaker 1: he will not let the matter, even if it means
Speaker 1: training a particular bird to badger the king. They I'll
Speaker 1: have a starling, So we talked to speak nothing but
Speaker 1: Maltimon give it. And with the writing of those words,
Speaker 1: the seeds of a disaster. Nearly four centuries later, we're planted.
Speaker 1: Shakespeare chose the starling as hotspurs fanciful Avian accomplice because
Speaker 1: it can mimic almost anything, especially other birds. But there
Speaker 1: are a few more things you need to know about
Speaker 1: starlings for this story thread. First, they are small, thick set,
Speaker 1: dark birds with white speckles. They weigh about two and
Speaker 1: a half ounces, but they are packed with muscle. Starlings
Speaker 1: are twice as heavy as they should be for their size. Second,
Speaker 1: starlings traveling gangs, very large gangs called murmurations. Sometimes the
Speaker 1: number of starlings and a murmuration could number in the thousands.
Speaker 1: If you have ever witnessed a large murmuration of starlings
Speaker 1: as it soars and swoops across the sky, like one
Speaker 1: big creature. It's an experience you will not soon forget.
Speaker 1: One final fact you need to know. Starlings are native
Speaker 1: to Europe. Yet more than two hundred million starlings are
Speaker 1: estimated to live in North America today. There were none
Speaker 1: here during Shakespeare's time. So what happened, Well, for that
Speaker 1: we have a single man to thank, an eccentric Bronx
Speaker 1: resident who loved birds, and the bard who was this
Speaker 1: bird lover. His name was Eugene Chieflin, and he had
Speaker 1: a master plan. The wealthy New York drug maker wanted
Speaker 1: to introduce all of the birds mentioned in Shakespeare's plays
Speaker 1: to North America. Many of his attempts were unsuccessful, but
Speaker 1: not with the starling. He released sixty of the birds
Speaker 1: in Central Park in and there was every reason to
Speaker 1: believe the Avian immigrants would not survive the harsh New
Speaker 1: York winter, but some of the small flock of European
Speaker 1: pilgrims managed to find shelter in the eaves of the
Speaker 1: American Museum of Natural History on the park's west side,
Speaker 1: and the starlings did what Schiaflin hoped they would do.
Speaker 1: They went forth and multiplied big time, and not just
Speaker 1: in New York City. Starlings reached the Mississippi River by
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty. By nineteen fifty, they were pretty much everywhere
Speaker 1: and drove out Native American species like bluebirds and woodpeckers,
Speaker 1: which is how Shakespeare's single fictional starling came to be
Speaker 1: get over two hundred million flesh and blood descendants in
Speaker 1: North America. One of the North American starling's favorite nest
Speaker 1: sites in the mid twentieth century was Tobin Bridge in Boston.
Speaker 1: The city's big dig construction project would eventually change that,
Speaker 1: but over one hundred and fifty thousand starlings used to
Speaker 1: flock to Tobin Bridge every evening at sunset as commuters
Speaker 1: drove home. It seemed harmless enough, even beautiful. Up next,
Speaker 1: Eugene Chieflins starling spark an unforgettable tragedy. They hit the
Speaker 1: front of the airplane, resembling machine gun fire, just burning.
Speaker 1: There wasn't a square inch in my windshield that wasn't splattered.
Speaker 1: I couldn't see a thing. That's a reading of an
Speaker 1: account from Captain W. H. Jenkins. His plane was still
Speaker 1: on the runway at Boston's Logan Airport in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: when the starlings hit his windshield. He was able to
Speaker 1: bring the aircraft to a stop. But two weeks earlier,
Speaker 1: on October fourth, Eastern Airlines Flight three seventy five was
Speaker 1: not so lucky. A cloud of starling's headed home to
Speaker 1: Tobin Bridge, maybe twenty thousand of them, collided with the
Speaker 1: plane seven seconds after takeoff. Three of the plane's four
Speaker 1: propeller engines were overrun with birds. It happened so quickly
Speaker 1: the pilots did not utter a word to the Logan
Speaker 1: Airport tower. The plane rolled and crashed almost vertically into
Speaker 1: the harbors shallow water, not far from where cousins of
Speaker 1: yachts were anchored offshore. It remains the worst bird strike
Speaker 1: in US aviation history. Starlings may be small, but they
Speaker 1: are considered by aviation experts to be a lethal threat
Speaker 1: in large numbers. A single starling, writes Michael Califatus and
Speaker 1: his book bird strike can be a feathered bullet. A
Speaker 1: swarm of the birds is a feathered fusillade. The scene
Speaker 1: in the harbor after Flight three seventy five went down
Speaker 1: was horrific, but the response was heroic. Sixty lives were lost,
Speaker 1: but there would have been more. If local residents, including
Speaker 1: several teenage boys, had not acted quickly, many of the
Speaker 1: passengers were trapped under water with their seatbelts fastened. Rescuers
Speaker 1: waded out into the debris and formed a human chain
Speaker 1: in the thick mud to pull out survivors. A thorough
Speaker 1: investigation of the crash was conducted, thousands of drugs starlings
Speaker 1: were fired into identical propeller engines to simulate the bird strike.
Speaker 1: The tragic crash of Flight three seventy five set in
Speaker 1: motion new design features and precautions that have made bird
Speaker 1: strikes far less common today, but they still happen from
Speaker 1: time to time. The most notable occurred in two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: when Chelsea Shlenburger A. K. Souley had to make an
Speaker 1: emergency water landing in the Hudson River after his plane
Speaker 1: was struck by a flock of Canadian geese. Eugene Chiaflin
Speaker 1: could never have known the chain of events that his
Speaker 1: experiment in Central Park would set in motion, and the
Speaker 1: damage done does not stop with the tragedy in Boston.
Speaker 1: Starlings do not just fell planes. They transmit disease, They
Speaker 1: consume cattle feed. Sometimes they devour entire wheat fields. Starlings
Speaker 1: are estimated to cost US agriculture around one billion dollars
Speaker 1: a year in crop damage. As Shakespeare once wrote, when
Speaker 1: sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions,
Speaker 1: and occasionally, it could be added, they come in murmurations.
Speaker 1: Every sometimes when this ship, cong say and stock this. Sorry, yes, never,
Speaker 1: it's wrong. Let's cover us always. We always. The Threat
Speaker 1: is produced by Libby Coleman and me Sean braswell. Our
Speaker 1: editors are Carlos Watson and Samir Rao. Chris Hoff engineered
Speaker 1: our show special thanks to Cindy Carpi and sun Jeeve
Speaker 1: Tandon and Tracy Moraan. This episode features music by Johnny
Speaker 1: Flynn the song called Murmuration. Check us out at aussi
Speaker 1: dot com or on Twitter and Facebook. If you love surprising,
Speaker 1: engaging stories from history, look no further than the flashback
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