This hasn’t been the best year for air travel.
In March, Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 disappeared with 239 aboard, and then in the span of seven days this month, more than 450 people died in three crashes including another Malaysian jet shot down over Ukraine.
It’s led many to question if 2014 would be the deadliest year in aviation after 761 had already died.
Truth is, not even close. In 1972, a startling 2,429 people died across the globe in commercial plane crashes.
Way back in 1908 wasn’t a particularly good year for aviation either, and it forever linked Vicksburg to air disasters.
On Sept. 17, 1908, Orville Wright and a young Army lieutenant took off on a test flight over Fort Myer, Va., in front of a large crowd including Secretary of War William Howard Taft. On Wright’s fifth circle above the crowd, the propeller broke. Wright shut down the engine and managed to glide to about 75 feet, but there, the plan took a nosedive.
The ensuing crash claimed the life of 26-year-old Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge, the first person ever killed in a crash of a powered airplane.
Selfridge had been a bit of a pilot in his own right, and the Air Force lists him as the first military member to ever make a solo flight.
Of course, his name sounds familiar here in Vicksburg because his uncle and namesake, Thomas O. Selfridge Jr., was commander of the USS Cairo when it was sunk in the Yazoo River in December 1862.
That was another dubious first for the Selfridge family.
The Cairo was the first boat sunk by an electronically detonated torpedo or mine. Thomas O. Selfridge Jr. saw plenty of other wartime disaster, and some have argued that he was the luckiest man of the war.
In March 1862, he survived the destruction of the frigate Cumberland at the Battle of Hampton roads. Two years to the day that the Cumberland was lost, he was commander of the USS Conestoga when it sank after a collision with the USS General Price.
He also held command positions at one time on the USS Alligator and USS Monitor, both of which eventually sank.
I commend Thomas E. Selfridge’s bravery, but I think if I had that sort of family history, I would have never boarded a plane.
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Josh Edwards is a reporter and can be reached by email at josh.edwards@vicksburgpost.com or by phone at 601-636-4545.